


The Shadow Men

by InsaneTrollLogic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-22
Updated: 2014-03-22
Packaged: 2018-01-16 14:50:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 30,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1351441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsaneTrollLogic/pseuds/InsaneTrollLogic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The campus of Stanford lies in ruins. The veil between hell and earth is getting thinner by the day and Sam Winchester may be the only thing standing between the world and total destruction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to LJ. Completed 9/14/2008

The shadows were alive, twisting together, sulking into corners and devouring all light that dared come near. There was a man in the shadows—no—a man made of shadows. A dark, hollow man with the light all scorched out of his eyes.   
  
A clock nearby chimed midnight and a flutter of crows took to the sky. The shadow man’s face jerked upright toward the inky black lines of sky. There was an electricity to the air, an almost palpable feeling of magic and the shadows began to coalesce, solidify until there was man where the shadows had been. A man made of shadows with golden yellow eyes.  
  
Not twenty miles away, Stanford was still burning.   
  


________________________________________________________________________

  
  
The emergency room was past full. The patch-ridden blue seats were all filled. The sick, the dying, the healthy--there were hardly means to distinguish between the groups. Everyone was smudged with dirt and coughing up black from smoke-filled lungs. Every time the door to the back opened, dozens of heads swiveled toward the sound.  
  
The nurse looked every bit as bad as the patients, hair disheveled and falling out of a loose pony tail in tangled clumps. The people at the registration desk had a backlog of at least twenty people.   
  
Sam Winchester stood quietly just under the television, hunching over just a little to make sure his head didn’t jar the monitor. His hands were shoved in the pockets of his oversized jeans. Like everyone else in the room, he was smudged with ash, his clothes absolutely filthy, but he was still standing—one of the few who’d escaped the Stanford fire intact. He’d reached a sort of stasis in the past four hours, a mental compromise. If he didn’t move, he didn’t think and if he didn’t think, he didn’t have to remember.  
  
Overhead the anchor was talking about Stanford and the rash of fatal fires and the death toll rising, rising, rising. Sam dropped his eyes and started counting the tiles on the floors. He hated emergency rooms. Hated hospitals. He couldn’t help but think of Uncle Bobby back in his sophomore year bleeding out from a hunting accident and the doctors in their prestige white lab coats saying  _there’s nothing we can do._  
  
A kid bumped into his knees, looking up at him with innocent brown eyes. He was four years old if Sam had to guess, four years old and smudged with ash from a sight no one should ever have to witness at any age—much less four.   
  
“Mister, are you a giant?”  
  
Sam forced a laugh past his lips. His throat felt dry. He tried to smile. “No, I’m not a giant.”  
  
It didn’t do anything to reassure the kid. His eyes widened noticeably and scampered back to his mother, a pretty red head with a nasty looking burn across the left side of her face. Sam felt the smile drop from his face, melted away by the heat of the still burning flames. Above him, the grave-voiced newscaster intoned, “There are still hundreds of students left unaccounted for.”  
  
The emergency room door swung open. A sobbing woman stumbled out, groping for the empty box of tissues on the registration desk. Her face was red. There was snot coming out of her nose. When it was clear the call for them wasn’t forthcoming, people began to look away, sparing the woman a little bit of dignity.   
  
Sam couldn’t tear his eyes away. There was real passion in this sorrow, something genuine and heartbreaking and beautiful in the way she collapsed.   
  
“Jessica Moore?” Someone at the door called. “Was there anyone here with Jessica Moore?”  
  
“Me!” Sam called, louder then he intended as he tore his eyes from the sobbing woman. “Me! I’m with Jessica Moore!”  
  
He straightened up too quickly, bashing his head on the base of the TV stand before lunging forward and almost tripping over a girl with a broken wrist sitting at the base of her mother’s chair. “Sorry,” he mumbled, “sorry, sorry.”  
  
But no one was looking at him anymore. Their name hadn’t been called, but Jessica’s had. Jessica who had been brought to the emergency room by ambulance almost five hours a girl. Jessica who had been on fire when Sam had last seen her. Jessica who had been burning with all the fury of the sun.  
  
It was a doctor asking for him and not a nurse and the incongruity jarred him to the bone. The doctor’s lab coat had a blood stain on the left collar, dried but still fresh. His stethoscope was slung across his neck. He was pale-faced with huge dark circles under his eyes like he hadn’t eaten since he woke up this morning. “You’re with Jessica Moore.”  
  
“Yeah,” Sam said. “I’m Sam. Sam Winchester. Jessica’s fiancé.”  
  
The doctor looked down at his chart and then back to Sam. “Come with me, Mr. Winchester.”  
  
Sam slipped in through the emergency room. There was a patient lying on a hospital bed just inside, breathing through an oxygen mask. Sam could hear the constant whir of sirens echoing from outside.  
  
The doctor was moving briskly, threading his way through the battery of nurses and doctors that flitted from room to room. It seemed to Sam that there were victims everywhere. Every room was occupied and most had patients in wheelchairs perched just outside.   
  
They finally came to a rest outside room nineteen. The shades were drawn and the door was closed but Sam fought to see through them despite himself. “Is this Jess’s room? Is she all right? Can I see her?”  
  
“Mr. Winchester,” the doctor said, adopting a grave tone that dropped a pit in Sam’s stomach, “There were some complications between the burns and the smoke inhalation. Not to mention the lacerations to the stomach. We did all we could, but Ms. Moore passed about ten minutes ago.”  
  
The sound cut out. All Sam could hear was his own heartbeat throbbing in his throat. This couldn’t be happening. He’d gotten there in time. He knew he’d gotten there in time. He’d pulled her out. He’d kept her breathing until the ambulance got here and he’d waited and waited and waited. The longer she was back there, the more confident he’d felt. The more sure he’d been that she would make it, that she would pull through.   
  
“Mr. Winchester?”   
  
There was suddenly a hand on his shoulder, the haggard doctor’s awkward attempts to console him. But Sam didn’t need comfort. He couldn’t feel anything right now even if he wanted too. He forced his lips open, forced his tongue to fold itself around the words. “Can I see here?”  
  
The doctor pursed his lips and glanced down the hall, at the myriad of people suffering outside rooms, towards the waiting room where dozens more tried to keep themselves together. “You have five minutes. I apologize for the callousness, Mr. Winchester, but we’re short of rooms and there are people out there who could really use it.”  
  
“I understand,” Sam said thickly. “Do you think I could see her alone.”  
  
“Of course,” the doctor said. “I’ll be back to check on you.”  
  
Sam stared at the door for a long moment and then, he reached for the handle, twisted it and pushed it open. He felt like he was a million miles away, watching his own actions through a telescope instead of living them. He watched as he carefully shut the door, he watched as he pulled back the sheet to get a look at Jessica’s face and then he was crashing screaming back down to earth as it hit him all at once. There smell was rancid something from a battlefield, a mixture of burning hair and scorched flesh. The skin on the left side of Jess’s face was red and melted and the slash across her stomach was stitched up almost roughly with more than a hundred tiny black lines like the bride of Frankenstein. She was almost unrecognizable, her face melted, her hair black and burned, the only thing that could confirm her identity was the small diamond ring on her left hand that Sam himself had placed there only a week before.   
  
He felt gutted, empty like the world had split on its seams and spilled his soul out along with it. “Damn it, Jess,” he whispered, grasping her still cooling hand in his own. “We were going to get married.”  
  
He could still see here if he closed her eyes. He could see her where he found her, pinned to the ceiling by some invisible force only that couldn’t be happening because that couldn’t have been real. People didn’t—just—  
  
Pain sliced through him, starting at the temples and shooting down around his spine. He collapsed, knees meeting unyielding tiles with a sickening crash. His torso sifted sideways, upending a heart monitor along with it. Before his eyes played images of fire, of pain, people screaming. He though he saw the registration desk, this room, a janitor in the back of the hospital with yellow eyes burning like the sun.   
  
“Mr. Winchester!”  
  
There was a light in his eyes. “Mr. Winchester, can you hear me?”  
  
Sam gasped, the room snapping back into focus. A doctor was bending over him, shining a light into his eyes. Jessica’s corpse was somewhere above him. He could see the hand with the ring dangling limply over the side.   
  
“Mr. Winchester! Can you hear me?”  
  
And then more distantly: “Jesus Christ, we can’t fucking spare another bed.”  
  
“I’m fine,” Sam said, pushing the doctor away. “I’m all right. Get away.”  
  
“Mr. Winchester, can you tell me what happened?”  
  
“There’s going to be a fire,” Sam said, pushing himself to his feet and wobbling toward the door.   
  
“Mr. Winchester, I strongly advise against any sudden movements. You’ve just passed out, you’re going to need—“  
  
“There’s going to be a fire, here,” Sam insisted, shoving the doctor out of the way. “Soon. Maybe it’s even started right now.”  
  
“The fires are in Stanford, Mr. Winchester. You’re perfectly safe here, I assure you,” the doctor said, arms raised in a placating manner. “Now I really must insist you settle down so you can be looked at.”  
  
Sam froze for the briefest of seconds, considering all of the options all of the alternatives. This was insanity, but there’s been nothing but insanity these past few hours.  
  
And what if he was right.   
  
He jerked into motion, darting through the partially opened door and into the inner workings of the emergency room. He crashed through a nurse, rounded a corner, yanking hard on the fire alarm affixed to the wall as he turned. The alarm system screeched, lights flashed and the building went up in a panic. Sam glanced over his shoulder to see that Jess’s doctor was pursuing him and Sam didn’t have much hope at disappearing with his hulking six foot four frame. He ducked through another corner and onto an ambulance ramp before hitting the pavement and the wash of unseasonably warm October air. He didn’t stop until he’d reached the outskirts of the parking lot, turning back around and gulping air. There was no one following him, but he could see a flood of people pouring out of the ER and other entrances of the hospital and in the distance on the horizon, he could see the smoke from the still burning campus of Stanford.   
  
His chest heaved and he doubled over, pulling at the knees of his jeans, sucking wind like he’d just finished a marathon. Everything about the hospital was fine.   
  
Of course it was fine. There was no reason why it wouldn’t be. No reason to think that the bizarre vision had come from anything other then stress and shock. But then Sam saw a flicker in one of the windows, a yellow flame waving from a patient’s room on the second floor. And a second later, there were a half dozen yellow flames and the next even more. Sam stared, wide-eyed at the spectacle. There had to be at least two dozen points of origin and that wasn’t real. That wasn’t possible. The whole hospital couldn’t be burning, just like Stanford couldn’t be burning and Jess couldn’t be dead and he couldn’t have seen it before it had actually happened.   
  
He could hear the screams starting to rise, the discordant sounds of a symphony orchestra tuning through the otherwise silent night and he was suddenly seized by terror. He needed to get out of here, to get away. He started trying car doors one after the other until the door for a dark blue four-door Toyota slid open. He didn’t even bare a though to the vehicle’s owner. Odds were they wouldn’t be needing it.   
  
Sam fought down an almost hysterical snort of laugher as he groped at the wires under the steering wheel, touching two together until he heard the engine roll over. He’d grown up on Uncle Bobby’s junkyard where hotwiring a car was sometimes the only way to get it rolling and he’d never thought he’d be using that knowledge for this.   
  
The gas gage read three quarters full and Sam roared out of the parking lot, skidding around the corner and running three stop signs along the way.


	2. Chapter 2

Uncle Bobby ran a junkyard called Singer’s Salvage where Sam had grown up as a kid. Sam hadn’t known his real dad. Just Bobby Singer who was gruff and loyal and almost definitely not his real uncle but as close as Sam had to family. He’d taken Sam in when he was just six months old and raised him the best he could. Uncle Bobby had said his dad was dead but either didn’t know or wouldn’t provide the details as to how. In fact, Sam got the impression that Uncle Bobby didn’t know much at all about his real family outside the surname Winchester.  
  
Sam wished he’d pushed the issue sooner. Wished he’d demanded a name and a death certificate for his father. Wished he’d prodded past Uncle Bobby’s mutterings of ‘Damn fool Winchesters’ while he still could.   
  
It was too late now. Uncle Bobby was going on two years dead and Sam Winchester didn’t have any answers. All he had was a heedful of memories that didn’t quite match up with the person.   
  
Sam had been there when Uncle Bobby died. Had borrowed a car and broken every speed limit getting to the hospital.  _Hunting accident,_ the doctors said,  _we’re doing everything we can._  
  
Uncle Bobby had been ghost white, lying under the thin white sheets looking paler then Sam had ever seen him. His hat was gone, replaced by stringy gray hair that didn’t match the formidable beard.  _We think your uncle tried to approach a wounded wolf and it attacked. It’s a miracle he’s lasted this long._  
  
Only Uncle Bobby didn’t hunt. Not anymore at least. Sam had heard him refer to his hunting days back with some of the customers at the salvage yard, but those were the customers Sam wasn’t permitted to speak with; The ones that were taken to Bobby’s office, the back room with the locked door and the funny books. Sam knew his way around cars and he knew his way around locks, but there had always been something keeping him out of that back room. To this day he didn’t know everything about Bobby Singer. Uncle Bobby kept secrets and Sam had been raised to respect that much.  
  
When he pulled into Singer’s Salvage, he wasn’t terribly surprised to find a few new cars out front. It was like this every time he came home. He’d hired help to take care of the yard while he was off at school and ran it himself through the summer. The girl he’d hired to look after the place had a knack for picking out junkers worth saving and knowing which ones to trash. She was an almost twenty-year old college dropout named Christina Chambers with greasy black hair and perpetual dirt smudges crossing her face. The car closest to the house was hers.   
  
Sam stumbled out of the stolen Toyota blinking into the sun. He felt unstable somehow, almost like he could feel the Earth spinning under his feet. The day’s events hadn’t quite taken root in his consciousness. He felt like he could still see the flames licking at horizon, felt the phantom impression of Jess’s cooling hand.   
  
The rest of it, the vision, the explosion of flames at the hospital, Sam didn’t think about that too hard. There was something lurking on the edges of his consciousness, an idea forming that changed everything he knew about the universe.   
  
He pushed it aside and made his way into the Singer’s Salvage office. “Chris?” he called. “Chris, you here?”  
  
“Don’t fucking move,” a voice said as something round and metal was pressed into the small of his back. “Move and I swear to God, I’ll fire.”  
  
Sam froze. The thing pressed against his back couldn’t be what he thought it was. There was no way he’d driven hundred of miles away from Stanford and fire and corpses only to get his ass shot.   
  
“Don’t shoot!” he said gruffly. “I’m not armed, I don’t want to hurt you. I promise. I live here!”  
  
“Sammy?” the voice broke and the hand holding the gun dropped from his back. Sam turned around just in time to get an armful of Christina Chambers. “Jesus, Sammy. I thought you were in Stanford. I been watching the news and reading the papers. I thought you were dead.”  
  
Sam gently pried Chris off of him. She was wearing a pair of torn jeans and dirty green T-shirt. There were tears smudging the grease stains on her face. “Calm down, Chris. What’s happening? Why have you got a gun?”  
  
It was scary the way her face darkened. The way the relief faded from her eyes. She turned to the office window, eyeing the house through the weathered glass pane. “There’s someone in the house.”  
  
“Someone’s trying to rip this place off?” Sam repeated, raising an eyebrow. “Why? It’s not like we’ve got anything valuable.”  
  
Chris hit him squarely on the chest and for just a minute, Sam could pretend things were back to normal—summer vacation with him and Chris and dozens of junked out cars. “Well what the hell are we going to do about it?”  
  
“You were hiding,” Sam accused.   
  
“I was ambushing!” Chris countered, more then a little defensively. “It’s a perfectly sound tactic. But there’s two of us now and only one of them. I saw we go in and shoot them.”  
  
“No one’s shooting anyone,” Sam said. “Put the gun down and we can go see what’s going on.”  
  
Chris grudgingly put the pistol back behind the counter and fell into step behind Sam. Sighing, Sam made his way out to the old house, reaching for the key in his pocket.   
  
He didn’t need it because the door was already opened. To his untrained eyes, it didn’t look forced. The lock hadn’t been torn from its place. The floor wasn’t littered with glass from a shattered window. But there was a scuffling sound coming from somewhere inside that was too loud to just be rats. Sam turned to Chris. “Stay behind me, yeah?”  
  
“No need asking twice,” Chris huffed, snaking a baseball bat from beside the doorway.   
  
Sam rolled his eyes, but pressed on ahead. The noise was coming from somewhere in back. He could see footprints in the thick layer of dust that had accumulated in his absence. A television was blaring from somewhere in the distance.  _We have unconfirmed reports saying that there are people appearing from the smoke._  
  
The door to the back room, the room Uncle Bobby had kept off limits from the days when Sam was just a kid, was standing ajar. Sam could see dozens of books strewn across the room, great dusty volumes he never knew his uncle owned. Sam eased the door open another few centimeters, inching himself inside, Chris slipped in after him, feet light on the creaking floorboard.  
  
There was a man in the room, crouched down on his haunches, studying an old book. He was just past forty if Sam had to guess, wearing a beat up leather jacket and a pair of jeans ridden with holes. He had long, stringy brown hair that was tied up in a tiny ponytail. Sam glanced back to Chris. She looked pointedly at the guy, raised her bat and mimed bashing someone over the head. Sam frowned and turned back. “Excuse me? Sir?”  
  
The man turned back around slowly and eyed Sam and Chris. “You’re not Bobby Singer.”  
  
“No,” Sam said. “No, I’m not. I’m Sam Winchester and this here is Chris—“  
  
Chris cut him off, eyes widening in panic. “Don’t you tell this thief my last name, Sammy or I swear I’ll rip your balls off.”  
  
“That’s just Chris.”  
  
An eyebrow raised. There was a scar marring the right side of the intruder’s face, starting on the temple and slicing straight down to his lip. It was old wound, faded and half hidden by the stubble of a week-old beard. “If you ain’t Bobby Singer, you can’t help me.”  
  
“Then get the fuck out of this house!” Chris growled. Sam could see through her bravado with ease. Her knuckles were white on the grip of the bat. Her hands shook.  
  
“Or what, sweet cheeks?” the intruder countered. “You’ll take a whack at me with your Louisville Slugger? This ain’t your house.”  
  
“No,” Sam said, stepping forward. “It’s mine. And I want to know why you’re here.”  
  
“Ain’t your house either,” the intruder said. He stood up slowly, eyeing Sam the whole way. “Last I checked, the place outside was Singer’s Salvage and you ain’t no Bobby Singer.”  
  
Sam blinked“How do you know Uncle Bobby?”  
  
“Uncle Bobby?” the man said, turning the word over in his mouth. Sam caught sight of a book filled with arcane symbols on the floor and a sheathed knife sticking out of his back pocket. “I see this now. It’s coming back. Some hunter dumped a kid on Singer when he was about ready to hang up the salt guns.” He drew the knife out of the sheath, trailing the razor sharp blade over one of Bobby’s battered tables as he approached Sam. “How about you run and find your Uncle Bobby so the grown ups can talk?”  
  
Sam found himself standing up straighter, breaking free from chronically hunched shoulders, expanding to fill his gigantic frame. “How about you give me a name first?”  
  
The man’s lips peeled back in a wolfish smile. “Mason.”  
  
“That a first name or a last name?” Chris demanded.  
  
“Missy, you ain’t got a leg to stand on.” Mason sneered. He turned back to Sam, still clutching the knife in his hands. “So, Sam Winchester, where can I find dear Uncle Bobby?”  
  
Sam floundered for a moment, every instinct screaming at him to lie. Sam could lie with the pros. He’d grown up with Bobby Singer after all, a man not at all above the occasional con. But he didn’t like it and never can. His scrupulous honesty was his one minor rebellion against his guardian. He couldn’t count the number of times he’d been told,  _Sometimes a lie can be the safest thing in the world._ He’d disregarded the advice long ago. “Uncle Bobby died. Passed a few years ago.”  
  
“Then this was a wasted trip,” Mason grumbled, trying to push his way out the door. “I’ll be off.”  
  
Sam found himself moving to block the path out the door without fully knowing his reasons why. This was a man who’d broken into his house and now he was leaving without even taking a thing. This was great news. Fantastic.  
  
But there was something else here. Maybe the answers he’d been waiting for. Maybe some sort of explanation for Stanford on fire and Jess on the ceiling and the headache that came with pictures at the hospital. “No,” Sam said. “No, you can’t leave just yet.”  
  
“What the hell are you doing, Sammy,” Chris hissed, whacking him squarely in the back with the palm of her had. “Of course he can leave. He’s quite welcome to show himself out and never come here again.” She plastered on a fake smile and gave Mason a cheery wave. “Bye now, Mason. Let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.”  
  
“Best listen to the lady,” Mason said. “I am not a man you want to cross.”  
  
“Tell me why you’re here.”  
  
“You don’t want to hear about hunting.”  
  
Hunting. There was a magic word. Sam could spot a euphemism a mile away. Chris could see it too: the special inflection to the word. She voiced the question before Sam even had the chance to form it in his mind. “Hunting what?”  
  
Mason barked out a harsh laugh. The scar on the right of his face twisted sharply, marring the wrinkles on the skin. “Oh, things your worst nightmares can’t conjure up. If you’re in the dark, you’ll be must more comfortable there. I ain’t one to go scarring impressionable youth.”  
  
He shifted, trying to force his way past Sam, but Sam matched him move for move, effectively blocking his escape path. “Tell me.”  
  
“Fine,” Mason growled, any traces of amusement gone from his voice “There are things out there in the dark. Monsters and ghosts and things you couldn’t even dream up they’re so nasty. Things more evil then you could ever image.”  
  
“You’re full of shit,” Chris snapped. “Off your rocker. Blowing smoke. I ain’t been scared of the monster under my bed since my daddy stopped tucking me in.”  
  
Sam felt like he was drifting suddenly. Tripping down the bottomless abyss of bad memories and unanswered questions. He remembered:  
  
 _Uncle Bobby was dying in the hospital. The doctors said there wasn’t anything else they could do so they let Sam come in, let Sam say his last words, his goodbye. There had been tears falling from his eyes, streaming down his face even though Uncle Bobby had trained him to push away the tears since his use. “Hey, Bobby,” he’d said, grasping the older man’s arm.  
  
“John?” Bobby whispered.   
  
“Not John, it’s Sam. Remember? You’ve been letting me crash with you for the last nineteen years.”  
  
“Sammy?” Bobby seized his wrist with all the strength of a dying man.   
  
“Uncle Bobby?” Sam’s eyes widened and he tried to gently pull away, but he couldn’t the grip was an iron vice.   
  
Bobby pulled on the arm, raising his head just far enough to be heard. “Sam,” he said. The voice was a quiet rasp, hardly audible under the erratic beeping of the heart monitor. “Sam there are things out there, thing coming from the dark—“  
  
“What’s going on?” a nurse said. She looked at the monitor and then shoved Sam aside, whacking a button next to the bed. “We’ve got an m-set. He’s going into cardiac arrest!”  
  
“Uncle Bobby?” Sam said. “Uncle Bobby!”  
  
“Someone get him the fuck out of here!”_  
  
“No comeback for that one, Sammy?” Mason said. His voice was light but his face was deadly serious. “Monsters are real. Ghosts are real. Demons are real. There are people out there who hunt them. I’m one of them. Your Uncle Bobby was another. From the talk I heard, your daddy was one. Both of them are dead now and I’m guessing it ain’t from natural causes. Now believe me or not, but all signs point to something big coming and I came here looking for Bobby Singer’s help. If he’s kicked it, there’s elsewhere I can go.”   
  
“Does it have something to do with the Stanford fires?”  
  
The corners of Mason’s mouth twitched up again. “Look at that. When the civilians start noticing, you know things have started to blow up.”   
  
Sam took a step forward, taking full advantage of his imposing frame. Mason only came up to his shoulders, but he had a quiet confidence around him that made him seem bigger, more dangerous then he really was. “Tell me.”  
  
Mason eyed Sam, the smile falling from his battered face. “You sure this is a road you want to go down, Sammy boy? Once you start believing, there’s no turning back.”  
  
Sam didn’t flinch, didn’t correct the despised nickname, didn’t bristle at the condescending tone. He thought of Jessica on the ceiling and the hospital going up in flames. “Tell me about the Stanford fires.”  
  
Mason shrugged, walking back away from the door and into the room. He gestured to the television still showing endless clips of death and burning to the world at large. There was a graphic at the bottom of the screen reading: The country up in smoke? Death toll climbs past five thousand. “It’s not just Stanford anymore,” Mason said. “Stanford was just one of the first. There have been fires all across the country from Seattle to Miami to DC.”  
  
“That’s impossible,” Chris whispered, eyes suddenly glued to the television. “No way anything that widespread is natural. Sounds like a terrorist plot.”  
  
Mason shook his head. “The fires ain’t much more the omens. I’m not sure by any count but I’ve heard of things coming out of the fires. They’re calling them the shadow men.”  
  
 _Who are the shadow men?_  The voice from the television said.  _These mysterious figures appear to be coming out of the clearing smoke—_  
  
“What the hell’s a shadow man?” Chris asked. “And don’t you dare say a man made out of shadows.”  
  
“I don’t know what the shadow men are,” Mason said. “That’s why I was coming here for Bobby’s advice. I thought maybe I might find out what they are and how to kill them. Instead I get a snot-nosed college kid and pretty little swears a lot. There’s a good day wasted I could have been using to kill some of these sons of bitches. Now, move the hell out of my way because I’ve got work to do.”  
  
“Where are you going?” Sam asked.  
  
“The nearest fire. Things this big got to leave traces.”  
  
The next words were an impulsive decision, an almost involuntary spasm of the vocal chords: “I’m coming with you.”


	3. Chapter 3

Mason’s truck wasn’t build for three people. Sam claimed shotgun the second he saw the car which left Chris sprawled sideways in the barely there back seat. Not forty miles away from Singer’s Salvage, Sam was starting to regret his rash decision. Chris had been glaring daggers at him since they left. She’d fought fiercely against the decision, but she’d refused to let him go alone and Sam had refused to let Mason leave without him.

For his part, Mason was in sour tempers, bitter about dragging along of a few kids along for the ride. Sam had jumped headfirst into this strange new existence with nothing to his name. Almost everything he’d owned had been in that apartment at Stanford. Jess was dead. All he had were the clothes on his back and a slow burning drive for revenge. 

Not even a day through the road trip, Sam was curled up on the floor of a run down motel room, sleeping uneasily under dim lights and peeling wallpaper when Chris gently poked his shoulders. He startled awake, flailing his arms and catching her roughly in the cheek. “Jesus, Sammy. Bad dreams?”

Sam blinked the sleep out of his eyes, hazy pictures of fire and smoke. “What’s wrong, Chris?”

“Why are we doing this, Sam?” On the second of the double beds, Mason let out a loud snore. Chris lowered her voice. “Come on, you’re not like this. The Sam Winchester I know doesn’t go running off into the darkness without a plan. What happened?”

Sam bit his lip hard enough to draw blood. Chris seemed smaller in the darkness, almost frail, but Sam didn’t have a thing he could do to sugarcoat a thing. There was nothing he could say to make this easier. “Jessica’s dead.”

“Shit, Sammy,” Chris said. She put a hand on his shoulder. It was the first time anyone had touched him since the Stanford fires. “I’m sorry.”

“There’s nothing you can say to make this all right.”

From the bed, Mason was still snoring. There was a trunk full of weapons at the foot of Mason’s bed. There were solid lines of salt at all the doors and windows. To ward off demons, Mason had said, don’t got a clue why it works, but it does.

Neither of them slept that night. 

The next day, they drove to the sight of one of the mysterious fires and found only ashes. They hung around asking questions for a few days, but it was soon clear that whatever had caused the fire was long gone. So they went to Omaha where a poltergeist was terrorizing a school building. According to Mason, it was a cut and dry case. The poltergeist used to be a girl, just nineteen years old when her boyfriend strangled her on prom night. Mason did a little investigative work and the found themselves standing by the grave of a Candice Leroy just before midnight with a shovel, some lighter fluid and a box of road salt. 

Sam and Mason dug the grave, side by side but not saying anything. Chris held the flashlight and kept watch. It was Sam who hit the coffin first, arms screaming in protest at the unfamiliar motions. Mason gave him a quick smile and set to work with clearing the dirt from the top. They were just about to pry the lid off of the coffin when Chris let loose an ear splitting scream. Mason tossed the lighter fluid and a box of matches to Sam before pulling himself out of the open grave and pulling a shotgun from the depths of his jacket. “What’s happening?” Sam asked.

Chris’s screams ceased abruptly, somehow the silence was worse. “Finish the job!” Mason ordered, before running toward the direction of the noise. 

Sam looked around helplessly before tugging the life of the coffin up. Inside, the girl, Candice Leroy, had nearly rotted away. All that was left were bones, a few strands of white blonde and a filthy black dress. The stench hit him all at once and if he had eaten anything in the past twenty-four hours, he would have lost it right then and there. He hauled himself out of the grave, tossing his shovel down before he made the exit. Somewhere behind him, he heard the sharp crack of a shotgun blast and he looked just in time to see a blonde figure explode into mist. Chris was bleeding. “God damn it, kid. Do the damn job!”

Spurred into action, Sam undid the can of accelerant, flinching at the smell of gasoline on the night air. He dumped it into the grave with one hand and with the other, doused the remains in salt. He struggled with the match for a second and light one on the third try and dropped it into the grave. There was a sudden roar of fire and Sam stared at it, momentarily transfixed thinking of Stanford and Jessica. Then he remembered the spirit and turned on his heels just in time to see the blonde figure flicker and her frame crumbled into a thin column of flames. Mason lowered the shot gun. “Job done, let’s get out of here before someone takes notice.”

Sam watched him, breathing heavily, the smoke from the air burning the lining of his throat. Chris stumbled over to the car, fell to all fours and hurled into the dying grass. The dates on the gravestone read 1971-1990. Nineteen years old. The same age as Chris was right now. It was only three years younger then Sam himself. Sam crouched down next to her and rubbed a circle in her back, trying not to notice the tears streaming down her face. Mason packed up quickly, ushered them into the cars and a day’s drive later they were in a town in Indiana where there had been a series of cattle mutilations which Mason said were demonic omens but really turned out to be a werewolf’s hunting grounds. Chris had shrieked when the creature turning back into a man and that night, sitting outside their motel room she’d whispered, “I don’t know how long I can do this.”

Mason was visible through the cracked blinds in the window, cleaning his guns. Sam felt something in his gut clench. “It’s going to be all right, Chris,” Sam said.

“How can it be?” Chris asked. “I’m a mechanic who’s started hunting monsters. Your girlfriend’s dead, the whole damn country’s up in smoke and I’m fairly sure Mason’s a borderline sociopath.”

“Chris,” Sam said.

“I can’t stay,” Chris said. “I can’t do this. I’m going to go back to Singer’s Salvage and keep running the place. It’s still your place and you’re welcome anytime, but—“ She glared into the window as Mason examined the barrel of the gun. “—he’s not, Sammy. I don’t trust him.”

Sam slid down next to her, slinging his arm over her shoulders and pulling her towards him. Chris leaned into him, quiet tears racing down dirty cheeks. She sniffled. “I’m not cut out for this. I thought I was one of the strong ones but I guess I was wrong.”

“Chris, I don’t think that’s a sign of weakness.”

She didn’t say anything else. They went back into the motel room without even looking each other. Mason took one of the double beds. Chris took the other. Sam stole the comforters off of both the beds and set up shop on the floor. He dreamed of a fire and Jess and when he woke up Mason was still asleep but Chris was gone.

Sam panicked for a moment but then checked his phone to see Chris’s text message that said left 4 home. He breathed a sigh of relief and pulled himself up off the ground and into the bed Chris had left vacant. He felt a quiet tinge of pain in his forehead and reached up to massage his temples. Then he felt the pain again clutching at his head as the motel room flickered in front of him and all of a sudden there was fire sparking up out of an old house with a tree oddly situated in front yard. There was the flicker of numbers on the door, a sign reading Lawrence Kansas. The smoke started clearing and that left a man staggering out of the smoke, his face shrouded in shadows and Sam gasped as the motel edged its way back into his sights. He was lying on his back, staring up at the grungy white ceiling of the hotel room. Near the corner, the paint was peeling. Sam rolled off the bed, stumbling slightly as his feet hit carpet and staggered over to Mason’s bed shaking him as roughly as he dared. Mason sat up almost immediately, his hand reaching out to grasp Sam’s throat. Sam choked, trying to get the words out, but it took a little for Mason to realize where he was and what was happening. “Jesus, kid. Don’t fucking do that!”

“We need to go to Lawrence Kansas,” Sam said, his vocal cords protesting at the strain. “There’s going to be a fire.”

Mason was out of bed, pulling on his boots and his jacket before in less then a second. “How do you know about this?”

“Demonic omens,” Sam lied. “There’s a coffee shop across the street with internet and—“

“Wasting time now then,” Mason said, slinging his duffle bag over his shoulder. “Let’s go. Wake up the girl.”

“Chris is gone,” Sam said.

Mason didn’t blink, didn’t ask why, just shrugged and pushed his way out the door saying, “Come on, Sammy boy.”

Sam followed him out the door, not even bothering to correct the nickname.

________________________________________________________________________

 

Riding shotgun as an old Johnny Cash song blared from the speakers, Sam looked out the window trying to think of a way to maneuver the both to the correct house without mentioning the word vision. If Mason found out about these visions, he was screwed. Mason was a force to be reckoned with, a scourge of all things paranormal. He hadn’t even blinked when the werewolf he’d shot had turned back into a person and Sam was willing to be he wouldn’t blink before pumping a round into a vision having freak.

But as it turned out, Sam didn’t need an excuse, all they had to do was follow the smoke. Sam felt his stomach clench as the rounded the corner onto the street with the burning house Sam had seen in his dream. There was a pit forming in his stomach, despite everything, he’d been able to save some of the people at the hospital, but this was different, this was worse. There’d been no way he could get here in time. Mason pulled the truck to the side of the road and pulled a fake id from the box in the glove compartment before striding out and over to the fire truck. Sam looked in the other direction. Mason had an easiness about deception, something he could never quite be comfortable with. When he was a kid, Bobby had used him on a few cons but he’d never been comfortable with the arrangements. Not like Mason who strode over to the fire men with confidence oozing out of every pore. 

A few minutes later he was back next to Sam. “Nothing new,” he said. “They can’t put it out with what they have. They just need to let it burn and hope to hell nothing nearby catches.”

“What’s doing this?” Sam asked. “There’s got to be a reason.”

“Damned if I care,” Mason growled. “I just want to find something to kill.”

Something to kill, something to shoot, something to burn, dismember or destroy. Sam worried about it sometimes. He’d always been one to see both sides of the issue. It was why he’d gone pre-law in Stanford because there was no absolute good and no absolute evil. With a sigh, Sam turned his head toward the smoldering remains of the house only to see a man stumbling out of the shadows on unsteady legs. His face was shrouded in shadows, but it could have easily been ash from the flames. “Hey,” Sam said. “Do you see that?”

Mason put his hand on his jacket pocket, feeling the barrel of his sawed off shotgun. “I think that’s one of the shadow men.”

The firemen were loitering by the engine, dejected and jaded in face of a fire they couldn’t stop. Mason moved toward the house, toward the man. Sam followed closely behind him, glancing over his shoulder to make sure they weren’t being watched. 

The shadow man tripped, almost falling to his knees, but he put out a hand to stop himself and struggled to his feet. Every step he took from the flames he seemed to get more solid, the shadows fading from his face. He looked human. He looked like a person. 

Mason drew his gun, taking aim at the figure. “Wait!” Sam said. “Don’t.”

The figure tripped again, this time collapsing fully. Sam could make out light brown hair, skin slicked with blood, a sort of pendant dropping from his neck. Mason gave him a look. “This ain’t the time to be pissing around, kid.”

In front of them, the shadow men coughed and it looked darker then normal, but Sam swore that was blood. “I think he’s hurt.”

“Jesus Christ,” Mason growled, slipped the safety off the gun and pulled the trigger. Sam caught his hand just before the gun went off, jerking it up just enough so that it missed the fatal areas of the figure. Instead it clipped him in the shoulder. The body seized up, clutching the shoulder in apparent pain but he didn’t make a sound.

“What the fuck was that?” Mason growled rounding on Sam. “It’s probably the thing that started the fire. Who knows how many people it’s killed?”

“You can’t know that,” Sam said. “You can’t just go shooting things without asking questions. We don’t even know if it’s done anything wrong.”

Something in Mason’s face shut down. He shoot first and asked questions later. He carried out his hunts quickly and efficiently with the minimum amount of emotion. Sam got the feeling he’d shut down far before this, turned off every facet of his life except the hunt. “I’m done with you,” he said tonelessly. He shoved the shotgun into Sam’s head along with iron knife. “This is the last bit of help you’re going to get from me. If you get killed, that’s on your head.” He turned away, stalking back toward the couch. “And find your own fucking way out of Kansas.” 

Sam watched Mason leave in a mute short of shock. He was alone again. Chris had deserted him. Mason had left him to fend for himself. There was nothing he could do except watch the taillights of Mason’s truck disappearing. Finally a small moan from the man shocked him back into the present. He turned around, bent over and grabbed the man by his good shoulder. And hauled him to his feet. 

The shadow man felt surprisingly solid to his fingers, the blood on his side oppressively real. “Come on,” he muttered. “Let’s go.”

The gaze that greeted him was foggy with pain instead of filled with malice. Sam looped his arm under the shoulder, letting most of the man’s weight fall on him. The man moaned lightly, but didn’t make another sound. Sam got the feeling that most people with this level of injury would have been screaming in pain or---

Suddenly there was an influx of weight onto his shoulders. He looked to his side. The man’s head had lolled to his chest, his feet dragged in the grass. Sam swore softly, doing his best to keep the swaying body from crashing to the floor. He needed to get to a hospital only he couldn’t go to a hospital. Not with this man and not with the flames that seem to follow him where ever he goes. 

He had no idea what to do next.


	4. Chapter 4

He stole a car. An expensive model Lexis because he figured they could afford it and drives two towns over, checked into the cheapest motel he could find and called Chris. She answered the phone on the third ring sounding bone tired and irritated. “Singer’s Salvage.”  
  
“Chris, it’s Sam.”  
  
“Is Mason with you?”  
  
Sam hesitated for a moment but then said, “No, but I’ve got problems.”  
  
“I’m not bailing you out of jail, Sammy, I don’t have that kind of cash.”  
  
“Not jail,” Sam said, looking at the unconscious man on the bed. “Just—I found someone and I think he’s hurt. I need you to get all the first aid stuff you can and get down here. I don’t want to move him more then I have to.”  
  
“Why can’t you—“  
  
“The hospital’s not an option for this guy,” Sam said. He glanced over to the bed, watching the slow rise and fall of the man’s chest. There was a jarring difference between the motel’s garish colors and the man’s grayish skin almost like he didn’t quite belong in this world. “Just get here, please?”  
  
“Sam, you know it’s getting harder to move around right. People are panicking. It’s the fires. There was damn near a riot in town when I got back. They’re talking about the end of the earth. I put up salt around the house and I was looking through some of your uncle’s books. The ones Mason was after. I found something called a Devil’s Trap. Apparently demons can’t cross ‘em.”  
  
“I can’t believe we’re talking about demons,” Sam mumbled. “Maybe the world really is going to hell.”  
  
“I’m not sure you should joke about things like that, Winchester,” Chris said. She sounded cheerful on the phone, but Sam knew her well enough to recognize the front.   
  
There was a soft moan from the bed followed by a single word mumbled through cracked lips: “Johnny?”  
  
“Chris, I’ve got to go,” Sam said. “Can you make it here or not?”  
  
“I can make it if you give me the address,” Chris said. “Not going to have much luck otherwise  
  
Sam checked the motel stationary and read the address back to her before hanging up to go check on the man.  
  
He didn’t look the slightest bit demonic anymore. The shadows had solidified, twisting themselves into the shape of a man. Sam didn’t think he was dangerous. He looked terrible. The white t-shirt Sam had found him in was twisted and torn almost to shreds. Across his stomach were huge swooping cuts that threatened to break open anytime he moved. Mason’s bullet had only just clipped the shoulder, but the wound was ugly and raw and Sam had wanted to throw up while he was dressing it.   
  
“Hey,” Sam said. “Are you waking up?”  
  
He crouched over the figure, examining him for some clue about his identity. But his eyes suddenly shot open. They were wide and green and filled with panic and terror. “Hey,” Sam said. “Hey, calm down, I’m not going to hurt you.”   
  
He reached out a hand in the slowest, least intimidating manner he could, hoping to placate the man, but it didn’t work in the slightest. He flinched away from the hand and let out a scream.  
  
The scream was like nothing Sam had ever heard before. It was low and loud and utterly feral, like a wounded animal. “Shit,” Sam said. The motel was low rent, but he had to think this was bound to draw some unwanted attention and considering the stole lexis in the parking lot, Sam didn’t want to deal with any of that. He clapped a hand over the man’s mouth, effectively silencing the sound, but the figure thrashed and flailed the other ways, a wild spray of blows that went everywhere and every where. “I’m not trying to hurt you,” Sam said. “I’m here to help! I promise.”  
  
One of the cuts on his stomach tore open spilling very real, very red blood all over the sheets. “Oh, shit,” Sam said, careful to keep his voice gentle. “Just calm down! You’re going to hurt yourself.”  
  
The man calmed down just a little, his limbs going completely, rigidly still. After a second, Sam removed his hand from the man’s mouth. The man looked at his right shoulder where Mason had shot him earlier, noting the patchwork bandage Sam had attached while he was unconscious. He moved his mouth slowly, as if trying to remember the patterns of speech, attempting to fit his tongue around the words. When it came, the voice was scratchy and disused, escaping his lips in barely more then a whisper. “Am I out?”  
  
Sam didn’t have the faintest clue of what he was talking about, but the sentiment seemed extremely important, like it was the only thing that really mattered in this guy’s life. “Yeah,” Sam said. “Yeah, you got out.”  
  
The man nodded faintly, tension draining from his body. He was asleep a few seconds later. Sam sighed and grabbed a towel from the bathroom, wrapping it around the reopened wound as tightly as he could. Then he collapsed on the bed next to him and fell into his first sound sleep since before the fires.   
  
He woke up a few hours later by the creaking bedsprings from the other bed in the room. Sam cracked open his eyes just in time to see the man pull himself up to a sitting position. The small motion had him breathing heavily but he hid his pain well, barely letting a shudder cross his face. “What the hell are you doing?”  
  
The man jerked his head around, a quick, precise movement that seemed skittish and violent all at once. Sam immediately regretted his question. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you, it’s just—you’re hurt.”  
  
The man looked down at his injuries as if he’d completely forgotten they were there. A frown creased his face. “I wanted—“ he gestured vaguely with his left arm, cradling the other to his chest. He made a face. “Shit.”  
  
“What?” Sam asked. “Painkillers?”  
  
“No,” the man said, still frowning. His voice was getting better, still rough and grating but Sam could hear some character to it, some personality. He growled in frustration and mimed water coming down on his head with a hand and moving fingers.  
  
“A shower?” Sam asked.   
  
“Yes,” the man said. “A shower.”  
  
“Can you stand up that long?”  
  
“Walked out, didn’t I?” the man retorted, stumbling toward the bathroom, using the wall for support.  
  
Walked out of where? Sam wanted to ask. What could have done this to a man? What could have torn him up and spit him back out looking like this? He knew better then to trail him to the bathroom. With how skittish the man had been regarding sudden movements, Sam didn’t think offering help would come across as anything but a threat.   
  
Surprisingly, he made it across the room without incident, taking small but steady steps and keeping his breathing even. Sam remembered breaking his arm when he was a kid, remembered the way the pain had coursed through his body, remembered how it had been a struggle to hold back tears until the painkillers kicked in. This man looked worse, looked like he’d lost a fight with a wild animal and he wasn’t only dealing with the pain, he was on his feet and moving.   
  
The door swung closed and a second later there came the sound of running water. Sam sank back down onto the bed, trying to make sense of the situation, he stared at the ceiling and suddenly he was missing Jess more then anything else in the world. It hit him like a truck, crashing into his side and caving half of his bones. All he could think of was her smile, her face and the doctor leading him into the room with her corpse.  
  
He hadn’t let himself stop moving for a second since it happened, hadn’t let himself dwell on the memories. But now he’d opened the floodgates. He remembered her hair, her voice, her smile, the late night conversations and the small kisses between class and there were suddenly tears on his cheeks. He hadn’t cried since Uncle Bobby passed and even then he’d never felt this alone.  
  
There was a muffled knock on the door and then a familiar voice saying, “Sammy, get off your ass and let me in.”  
  
Sam took a deep breath and pulled himself back together, stifling the tears. He wiped angrily at his eyes and pulled himself to his feet to open the door. Chris shoved a duffel bag into his chest and stalked inside. “So where’s the injured guy?”  
  
“Believe it or not,” Sam said. “He’s in the shower.”  
  
Chris flopped back down on the bed. “You’re kidding me. The way you were talking, I thought he was bleeding to death.”  
  
“I thought so too,” Sam said. He paused for a beat. “You’re actually sitting in his blood.”  
  
He really shouldn’t have taken that much amusement with the sheer speed Chris shot up from the bed. Especially not when he missed Jessica so bad it hurt, but it helped a little. Chris didn’t look a thing like Jess with her dark eyes, darker hair and pale skin. Chris was a few inches shorter then Jessica had been and stick thin with a nearly flat chest. It was easier like this. There was less to spark the cinders of his memory.  
  
“If you don’t warn me about stuff like that, I swear I’ll kill you, Winchester.”  
  
Sam tossed the duffle bag onto the bed. “What’s all this. I just needed some first aid.”  
  
“That’s all the stuff I could find in your freakily gigantic size. You had some stuff lying around Bobby’s and I figured what with the fire and all...”  
  
“Thanks,” Sam said quietly. “I really owe you for this one.”  
  
She swatted him in the chest. “Sam, you’ve owed me for ages before this. I own your soul by now.”  
  
“Yeah,” Sam said, forcing a laugh. “I guess you do.”  
  
Chris smiled at him and slapped a keychain into his hands. “This is for you too. Figured it would be easier without a stolen car.”  
  
It took him a second to place it, but he recognized this key, recognized it because he’d seen it hundreds of times, lurking on a loop behind the counter at Singer’s Salvage. The key belonged to a 1967 Chevy Impala that had been around since before he could remember. It had been busted up pretty bad, but Bobby would tinker around with it every so often, trying to get all the parts back into working order. To the best of Sam’s recollection, the car hadn’t been running in the past twenty years. “You got the Impala going? You’re kidding, right?”  
  
“Not at all,” Chris said. “Been playing with it for a couple months. Finally got all the kinks out of the transmission. It’s a sweet ride.” She paused, chewed at the inside of her cheek, brushed a strand of errant hair out of here eyes. “I’d bet you could fit a body in the back if you need too. Seems like the sort of thing that would come in handy with, well you know.”  
  
It wasn’t something that Sam would have even thought to worry about, but that was Chris, she found practical ways to make use of almost anything. A truck that could be used to tote bodies was just another step in the long list of things that had included an engine fixed with a piece of a television antennae and a radio repaired with an old computer circuit board. She had an eye for solutions beyond the obvious, for seeing double uses in things. “Sounds good, Chris,” he said. “Thanks.”  
  
The door to the bathroom swung open and suddenly there was the man, standing dripping wet in the doorframe with a towel hanging loosely from his waste. Sam noticed the scars first, the thin white lines snaking through the angry red slashes. He could pick out a few burns, a knife wound, a few where Sam couldn’t even guess at the source. He could tell Chris noticed the other wounds beforehand, noticed the slashes across the stomach and the gunshot wound on the shoulder. “Christ,” she whispered, “how are you even standing?”  
  
The man stood perfectly still for a second as if paralyzed by this new and different person. Chris gave Sam a puzzled look, and Sam couldn’t do much but shrug. Finally the man’s mouth formed the word, “Christo.”  
  
Chris recognized the phrase from Mason’s disjointed ramblings about demons and salt and identification. “He thinks I’m a demon? Really? Go Christo yourself.”  
  
In response, the man’s face split into something resembling a smile. The difference it made was startling. For the first time, Sam realized just how young this guy was. If he had to guess, he’d put him at twenty-five or twenty-six, just a few years older then Sam himself.   
  
Not to mention he was an apparent hunter. Someone like Mason who knew the correct phrase to draw demons out, who probably knew about salt lines and burning bones. After Mason had shown his true colors, he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.   
  
“You think I could borrow some—“ the man made a sweeping gesture with his left arm before finally finding the word. “Clothes?”  
  
“Yeah,” Sam said digging through the duffle bag Chris had brought him for some of his smaller things. “We’ve also got some first aid stuff we should probably do first.”  
  
“Sure,” the man said and slowly maneuvered his way to the bed sitting straight on it, wet towel and all.   
  
Sam hesitated for a moment, fingers resting on the case for the first aid kit, exchanging a look with Chris. She held up her hands. “Don’t look at me, Winchester. I’m not the one adopting strays.”  
  
Shaking his head, Sam took the first aid kit and set it down on the bed disinfecting all the cuts first before wrapping them tightly in gauze. The man was so still, Sam was able to drift back to the first aid class he’d taken in Stanford when he’d dressed fake cuts on a inflatable dummy.   
  
When he finished, the man looked him in the eyes and mumbled, “Thanks.”  
  
Sam was struck by the uncomfortable feeling that it had been a long time since someone had shown this man any measure of kindness. Chris moved over toward them, sitting on Sam’s bed with crossed legs. “What’s your name anyway?”  
  
The man frowned, pressing his eyes shut. Sam slowly started packing up the first aid kit. He placed it back in his duffle bag, knowing there’d be a use for it sometime later and tried not to notice how the man had still failed to answer.   
  
“I’m Christina,” Chris offered finally.   
  
“And I’m Sam,” Sam said, echoing the greeting. “Sam Winchester.”  
  
The man opened his eyes again, something Sam didn’t recognize sparkling in their depths, something like defiance mixed with regret. “Dean," he said. "I think my name was Dean.” 


	5. Chapter 5

It was the past tense that got Sam more then anything else.  _I think my name was Dean._  It caught in his head pushing all thoughts of death and fire and Jessica out in its wake. He couldn’t do a thing but stare. Chris recovered faster, giving a smile no one but Sam could tell was fake and saying, “Well it’s good to meet you Dean. You going to be all right here for a second while I go talk to Sam here?”  
  
Dean shrugged, reaching a hand to his neck to touch the small bronze pendent on his neck before saying. “Yeah, sure.”  
  
Chris dragged him out of the room and into the parking lot, not letting go until they were safely out of earshot. “All right, Sam,” she said. “Where the hell did you find this guy?”  
  
“Lawrence, Kansas,” Sam said. “Me and Mason were investigating one of the fires. Why does it matter?”  
  
“It matters because he’s acting like a freaking torture victim! Who the hell else doesn’t consider their name a viable current part of them? I would have said amnesia with all the words he’s forgetting but---“  
  
“He sounded worse when I first brought him here,” Sam said, taking care to keep the outlook positive. This man may start out messed up but he’d get better. “He sounded like he hadn’t talked in years.”  
  
“He shouldn’t be in a motel in the middle of bumfuck nowhere,” Chris said indignantly, “He should be in a hospital!”  
  
“I can’t take him to a hospital, Chris,” Sam said. His voice had lowered to just above a whisper. “It’s just not an option. Especially not now.”  
  
“What? Are you afraid of the fires, Sam? There’s no pattern saying if they’re going to strike here or anywhere else. He’d be just as safe in a hospital as he is here! Safer even. I know you’re smart but you’re not a doctor, Sam. He needs a doctor.”  
  
“I can’t take him to the hospital because I think he’s one of the shadow men, alright?”  
  
“Are you freaking insane,” Chris hissed, low enough to keep Dean from hearing it through the wall. “I’ve seen the news reports those guys are supposed to be dangerous.”  
  
“I don’t know,” Sam said. “I’m not so sure. The guy in there doesn’t really seem dangerous at all. He just seems hurt and a little confused.”  
  
“The what happens when he gets better, Sam?” Chris asked. “What happens when he’s not confused anymore? How do you know he’s not going to snap and bite the hand that feeds him?”  
  
“He’s not going to,” Sam said. He liked to think he was a good judge of character. After all, he’d liked Jess the second he’d met her and he’d called Uncle Bobby and offered Chris a job when he’d first caught her trying to steal one of the cars in the junkyard instead of calling the cops. He’d seen cons, lying and liars and if Sam was good at one thing, it was telling one from the other. “Chris, you’re going to have to trust me.”  
  
Chris crossed her hand over her chest, adopting a position she probably thought looked tough but really just looked insecure. “Fine, but first thing you do is hop in that Impala and get me back home. And I mean first thing as in right now.”  
  
Sam nodded and pushed his way back into the room. Dean had struggled into a pair of Sam’s jeans in their absence as well as one of Sam’s button down over shirts. He was in the process of doing the buttons, fumbling with shaking fingers under too-long sleeves. Sam looked at Chris and smiled. This man didn’t look the least bit threatening.  
  
“Hey, Dean,” Sam said, “We’ve got to get moving. Are you all right?”  
  
“I’m out,” Dean said. “Never better.”  
  
He didn’t explain what he meant by out and neither Sam or Chris asked. They just filed out the door, Sam hovering a half step behind Dean to make sure he didn’t fall. Sam didn’t bother checking out of the motel because checking out would mean he’d need to explain the bloodstains on the sheets. He didn’t care as much as he thought he’d might. The owner had asked him cash or credit when he’d first come in and hadn’t even blinked when he’d hauled Dean back just ten minutes later.   
  
The restored Impala was a real thing of beauty, all sleep black lines and glossy paint. Dean seemed even more captivated by the sight, a dreamy far off smile crossing his face. He ran his hand over the hood and Sam could tell that it wasn’t just for keeping his balance. The man genuinely appreciated the appeal of a classic car. “She’s a sight for sore eyes,” Dean mumbled, fingertips snaking on up to the roof in a disjointed zigzag pattern. It was the most Sam had heard him say without stumbling over the words.   
  
Chris beamed at him, reservations about his presence momentarily swept aside. “Isn’t she beautiful? Just put the finishing touches on her. It’s been a hell of a project.”   
  
Sam could appreciate the car’s beauty but he’d grown up on a junkyard and seen many a beloved car reach the end of its life span. It tended to spoil the glamour of the now. “Yes,” he said. “It’s gorgeous, it’s shiny, but all that really matters is that it drives.”  
  
Both Dean and Chris shot him positively scandalized looks as he threw the duffle bag into the back seat along with the shot gun and the iron knife Mason had given him as a parting gift before striding around to the driver’s side and pulling open the door. Chris tossed him the keys and he bent down and moved the driver’s seat all the way back before getting in himself. Chris slid into the back seat and Dean slowly, almost reluctantly, took shotgun.   
  
They drove the first fifteen miles in nearly complete silence, trying not to notice the plumes of thick black smoke snaking up from the occasional towns dotting the highway. Sam turned on the radio, scanning through all the channels but all he found were religious shows preaching redemption and the end of the world. Sam turned the radio off in disgust. From the back seat, Chris offered, “I think there are some tapes in the glove compartment. I get the feeling they’ve been here for year but we might get lucky.”  
  
She unbuckled her seatbelt and reached past Dean to grab the box, shoving one at random into the tape player. The player sucked the tape in hungrily and a few seconds later music cut in mid-song. It took him a few seconds, but Sam recognized the riff from Back in Black and nodded to himself. Chris sank back, frowning a little but didn’t protest. Dean on the other hand, snaked his hand over to the controls and twisted the volume up a few clicks. A minute later, the song was over and it switched to a Black Sabbath song Sam recognized as Iron Man from a friend’s classic rock collection at Stanford. Sam felt a chill creep over him, prickling up goose bumps along the way. This car had been sitting at Singer’s Salvage for going on twenty years. Which meant that whoever had drove this car last, whoever had made and listened to these tapes was probably dead. He pushed the thought away and glanced over to the passenger’s seat to find Dean not only smiling, but singing, softly and a little off key, but singing all the same.  
  
Then for the first time since Jessica died, Sam let himself smile too.  
  


________________________________________________________________________

  
  
They stayed at Bobby’s place for eight days, Dean either sleeping or eating, Sam pouring over Bobby’s old books for anything he can get on demon lore. Chris ignored the both of them, spending all her time working on old cars or running the business part of the Singer’s Salvage. There were no customers. In point of fact, Sam had barely seen another car on the road. There were fires everywhere and with them the shadow men stalking out of the flames.  
  
He found Dean watching the news on the forth day, chewing slowly on a burger. Sam stayed just outside the room, gazing at the older man. All the news seemed to indicate the shadow men were dangerous, unpredictable, but Dean didn’t seem to be either. His movements were guarded and measured and he spoke in short precise sentences, taking great care not stumble over his words.  
  
The difficulty with speech was fading the more Dean talked. Sam had the sneaking suspicion that once Dean was up to speed he wouldn’t shut up. He wanted to ask what had made him forget. What could have possible forced something as important as speech out of someone’s mind.  
  
Either the injuries healed with extreme speed or Dean was just better practiced with dealing with them because within a week, Sam couldn’t discern any visible weakness in the man’s flesh. The bandages were still there, but he didn’t walk with the stooped hunch of someone in constant pain anymore.   
  
New people still set him on edge. He’d managed to douse two customers with what Sam later discovered was holy water before Chris had chased them both out of the office. There were more people headed to a salvage yard then Sam would have expected but after the third special on the end of the world, he reconsidered. People’s plans for more natural disasters were to get as far away from their current whereabouts as possible.   
  
Sam got the feeling they were moving out soon as well. The only thing Dean had done outside of eat, sleep and attack customers was watch the news and stock the Impala’s trunk with every single weapon he could find and a few dozen of Bobby’s thick books. It was the books that fascinated Sam. He’d never ever pegged Uncle Bobby for a reader but the collection was unreal. Some of the prints were well over four centuries old. Sam handled them carefully, holding the fragile paper between his fingers like a relic from another world as he jotted down everything he could find about demons and exorcism and ghosts and werewolves into a leather bound notebook, he’d found tucked in his old room. Dean watched him work sometimes, folded himself up and leaned against the wall and just stared without blinking until Sam finally met his eyes. Then he’d disappear into the back room and come back with exactly the weapon needed to kill the monster Sam had been researching, throwing it into the Impala’s massive trunk.  
  
It wasn’t until they’d been at Bobby’s a week when Sam finally found the collection of weapons Dean had been raiding. It was in the back room. The room that had been completely off limits to Sam as a child, the room where he’d found Mason pouring over books. There was a compartment, an almost invisible crack in the flooring that Sam hadn’t picked up on his entire life but Dean had discovered within days. The weapons trunk stashed underneath that compartment was extensive and varied and Sam wondered if he had ever really known his uncle at all. When he replaced the almost invisible trap door, he realized that there was no possible way to find that place if you didn’t already know it was there.   
  
That night when Dean was eating something unidentifiable from the gas station down the road, Sam slid down into a chair across from him and said, “How did you know Uncle Bobby?”  
  
He asked the question when Dean was in the middle of his bite and he took his sweet time chewing it over, savoring every scrap of what could only loosely be referred to as food and said, “Are you serious? I can barely remember my name.”  
  
“Dean,” Sam said, trying to rearrange his face into something comforting. He’d had practice with this part. Back when he was a kid, Uncle Bobby had him pull out the puppy dog eyes on more then on occasion. Sam hated using it, but he used it anyway. Anything that got him an advantage at this point was fair play. “Come on, you don’t even know your last name?”  
  
“What do you want me to close my eyes, and make a freaking wish?” Dean spat. “You know what? I’ll just borrow yours. Dean Winchester’s got a ring to it.”  
  
Sam opened his mouth to protest, but paused because there was nothing really wrong with that at all. In fact, it could almost be considered a complement, a small homage for not allowing Mason to put a bullet in his head.   
  
Dean shoved the last of the food into his mouth, swallowed without chewing and asked, “There anything else to eat around here?”  
  
Back at Stanford, Sam might have made fun of someone for eating this much, might have even gone so far as to tease Jessica about a relapse of the freshman fifteen, but Dean looked like he could use it. Sam got the impression that he used to be fairly well built, but inaction or torture or whatever had happened had beaten it out along with most of his memories.   
  
“Dean,” Sam said finally. “Where the hell happened to you?”  
  
“Hell happened,” Dean said. He stood up, almost toppling over the chair and added. “Forget about the food.”   
  
Dean slept fitfully that night. Sam could hear him from the next room over, creaking mattress and screaming. It got so bad that Sam found himself creeping into the next room to watch Dean thrash.  _Hell happened_ , Sam thought. Sam had never really considered it before, but it was conceivable that if demons exist, hell must too.   
  
And what kind of person went to Hell? Certainly not a good one. He realized in a panic that there could be a serial killer sleeping in that bed, that this man may well have been better off dead to the world. Every single indication about the shadow men on the news had been that they were evil soulless monsters, but here was Dean thrashing at the covers like a toddler in the grips of a nightmare.  
  
Sam almost didn’t want to consider the other option. He didn’t know if he wanted to consider Dean a good man because that would mean a good man could wind up in hell alongside all the demons and the scum of society.   
  
Sleep clawing at the edges of his vision, Sam made his way back into his room, staring at the old posters from his youth on the wall. He drifted off to sleep thinking of hell and dreamed of fires and a man suspended by meat hooks thousands of feet above ground and woke up in a cold sweat as the light from the cracks in the blinds were just beginning to seep into the room. He stood up, feeling more tired then he was when he’d gone to sleep the night before. He walked into the hallway and out of habit, checked on Dean to make sure the man was still breathing. He wasn’t in the bedroom. Puzzled, Sam wondered through the old house looking for him only to find him out in the junkyard, fast asleep in the back seat of the old impala. It was the most peaceful Sam had ever seen him. Most of the time, Dean was hunched in tight almost like he was constantly anticipating blows. _Or torture,_ Sam reminded himself.  _An eternity of blood and pain and entrails because that’s what you got in Hell._  
  
But in the Impala his features had softened and he was so still he could have been a corpse if not for the faint rise and fall of his chest. As quietly as he could, Sam pulled the door open. Apparently it wasn’t quiet enough because Dean snapped awake with a completeness and a suddenness that Sam didn’t think was possible.   
  
“What are you doing out here?” Sam asked.  
  
Some of the tension leaked out of Dean’s face, but he was still tensed, muscles ready to fight or run at a second’s notice.  _He was in Hell,_ Sam thought. _He was in Hell and now he’s not._  
  
“Been waiting for you Sammy,” Dean said, flashing a smile. In the soft morning light Sam could make out a smattering of freckles on his face. “We’ve got work to do.”  
  
“Work on what?” Sam asked.   
  
Dean blinked blearily and pulled a crumpled collection of papers out from the leather seats. There were obituaries circled in red, half a page of rough notes. Sam recognized pieces of the jargon from his brief sojourn with Mason. “Demonic omens?” Sam asked, flipping through the pages of scrawl.   
  
“You were hunting when you found me,” Dean said. It wasn’t a question. “Here’s a job. I say we find this son of a bitch and we kill it.”  
  
Sam hesitated counting the hundreds of thousands of reasons this wasn’t a good idea. Hunting was dangerous. Hunting could get you killed. Sam didn’t really know much about the paranormal. Sam didn’t know a damn thing about Dean. Dean just clawed out of hell.  
  
Then there was Jessica on the ceiling and Stanford on fire and his whole life consumed in flames. “Yeah,” Sam said. “Sounds like a plan.”


	6. Chapter 6

Dean drove. They fell into routine almost automatically. Sam lounged back in the passenger’s seat to give himself extra room through the legs and Dean slipped into the driver’s seat, flicking on the radio. Sam got the feeling that Dean was made to drive this car or maybe the car had been made for Dean to drive. When Sam drove the Impala, all he felt were the flaws, the tug on the steering wheel, the odd hitch in the clutch, but Dean handled it all like it was second nature, like he’d driven this car before. Only he couldn’t have driven this car before because this car had been sitting at Bobby’s place for pushing twenty years and there was no way Dean was thirty.   
  
Three hundred miles into the trip, AC/DC blasting in his ears, Sam pulled open the glove compartment, and started picking through the contents. There was a locked metal box that had rusted itself shot through twenty years of disuse. Sam tried prying at the edges but he couldn’t get a thing loose. Frowning, he replaced the box and pulled out a flashlight with a corroded battery and an old, iron hunting knife. While he was examining the knife, a yellowed piece of paper fluttered out of the glove compartment and settled into his lap. He picked it up gingerly, unfolding it to examine the smudged ink.  
  
 _Johnny,_  
This is yours now. Sorry I can’t be the one to show you how to drive it. Hope it’s been a good life. I know I’m not around but I really do love you, kid.  
-your dad  
  
Sam felt an odd stabbing though his heart. Uncle Bobby must have been holding this car for someone. Must have been holding it for damn near twenty years and now he’d never get it because there were hundreds of thousands of Johns out there and Sam didn’t have anything to go on.   
  
Dean turned down the music just a little bit, giving Sam a searching look. “What’s wrong, Sammy-boy? I can sense the angst clouds gathering.”  
  
“Nothing,” Sam said, replacing the contents of the glove box and shutting it with a snap. “How far we got?”  
  
There was a lurch as Dean stomped on the acceleration in response. 

________________________________________________________________________

  
  
They checked into a motel, Sam wincing at the shot to his credit card. Dean noticed his look, as they moved into the room. “You’re still using your own card?” he asked.   
  
“Yeah,” Sam said. “Nothing else I can do.”  
  
“You could apply for another card,” Dean said.  
  
“That would mean I had to pay for another card and I don’t have that kind of cash.”  
  
Dean dumped the weapons back onto one of the beds, pulling a box of salt out of the bag and heading straight for the windows and laying down a thick line. Next he took a knife and etched a symbol into the windowsill. Sam watched him awkwardly from the door wondering why he could remember all this when he couldn’t even remember his last name. “Who says you have to pay for it?”  
  
“Besides the United States government?”  
  
Dean snorted. “Loosen up a little, Sammy. They only care if you get caught.”  
  
Dean went to Hell, Sam reminded himself. It wasn’t any huge surprise he was lacking in basic human morals. “We’ll be breaking enough laws with just the grave desecration.”  
  
“You have no fun, Sam,” Dean said.   
  
“I need a shower,” Sam said.   
  
“You suck at subject changes,” Dean laughed.   
  
Sam ignored him, heading straight for the shower. When the hot water was pouring over his head, he wondered what he was doing here. Wondered if Jessica would have wanted him to move on instead of spiral down a path like this. Wondered how long he would last before earning himself a one-way ticket to the afterlife.   
  
He stumbled out of the shower ten minutes later, soaking wet and when he went into the hotel room to grab a change of clothes, he saw Dean standing on a chair in front of the door, tracing some elaborate symbol onto the roof. “That’s destruction of prosperity,” Sam informed him.   
  
Dean glanced down at him. “What are you--a freaking lawyer?”  
  
The comment hit Sam harder then he thought it might. He was going to be a lawyer. He’d taken his L-SATs and he’d interviewed at Stanford law. He was going to have his way paved: his life handed to him on a platter. But dreams of law school had gone up in smoke with Stanford and Jess. This was all he had left.   
  
Dean finished tracing the symbol and hopped down off the chair, grabbing a sawed off shot gun from the weapons bag and shoving it into Sam’s arms. “Load up, we’ve got to talk to the cops about this murder. You can bitch about my paint job later.”  
  


________________________________________________________________________

  
  
“I’m not impersonating an FBI agent,” Sam said. “It’s just not going to happen.”  
  
Dean gave him a look, raised and eyebrow and smirked a little. Sam tried not to think of just how natural this felt. Tried not to think about how he felt more like himself with Dean then he ever had with his friends at Stanford. “Why not?”  
  
“Illegal striking any bells?”  
  
Rolling his eyes, Dean slipped the crime scene tape for the house, went inside and approached the nearest officer. There had been several murders in town. Fine upstanding citizens who had no recollection of the deed after it was done. Who were shaking and sick and completely horrified when they realized they were holding a bloodied knife. There were witnesses who’d witnessed black eyes. Dean said demons. The most recent murder was last night, while Sam was dreaming of hell and Dean was passed out in the car. “Officer,” Dean said. “My name is…” he stumbled on the name for a second before saying, “Dean Winchester and this is my partner Samuel Singer. We’re with the FBI, investigating the recent rash of murders.”  
  
“FBI?” the officer said. “You don’t look FBI.”  
  
They didn’t look FBI. Dean still wore a mess of bruises and cuts all up and down his body, walking with a hitching, not quite smooth gait and Sam was in torn jeans and an old t-shirt. Dean ignored the statement plowing on ahead. “I understand this is the most recent victim?”  
  
“Yeah,” the officer said. He had a low drawling voice like he wasn’t at all in a hurry but there was an underlying panic in his body. As he talked he moved, leading them past the kitchen and into the living room where there was still blood on the walls and a corpse on the floor. “Sweet kid too. Known him all his life. It’s a damn shame what happened to these people. I mean the world catches fire and suddenly it’s all right to kill whoever you damn well please.”   
  
The body was dried, caked onto the man’s throat and sticking to the couch. There was a gash in the chest area, the wound itself almost invisible in the mass of blood on the shirt. Dean barely winced but Sam had to bite down the gag reflex before speaking. “I understand this isn’t your first murder this week.”  
  
“Town’s gone mad,” the officer said. “Nothing in terms of homicide for five years and then four in the past week. Fine upstanding citizens too. Never pulled any of them over for more then running a stop light.”  
  
“Have you identified any connection between the victims?” Sam asked. He was evolving into the role unconsciously. Straightening his spine, keeping his voice crisp and curt. If he was going to lie like this, he was damn well going to be sure he didn’t get caught.  
  
“Small town like this everyone’s connected,” the officer said. “Killers are connected, victims are connected. There’s some of use down at the station thinking it might be a cult kind of thing. Maybe it has something to do with those shadow men and all the fires. Whole damn world’s going to hell.”  
  
Dean’s face tensed at the word, his body froze as if rooted to the stop and for a second Sam thought all the progress he’d made in this past week had rewound all at once to reveal the shivering mess that had stumbled out of the fire.  
  
The momentarily lapse set off alarms in the officer’s head. Sam could see the connections being drawn one after another. Dean had underestimated him. He many have been a small time cop but he was sharp and he noticed things and he knew enough to see when something wasn’t right. “You boys aren’t cops, are you?”  
  
Dean opened his mouth as if attempting to speak but couldn’t force the words out. His fingers flexed and unflexed compulsively. Sam put a hand on his shoulder, an unconsciously protective gesture. “No, we’re not cops, but we’re investigating.”  
  
“Figured as much.” He narrowed his eyes. “What kind of investigating?”  
  
“Look, there’s something weird going on and we’re trying to get to the bottom of this.”  
  
“That’s what the police is for, son,” the officer said. “I assure you. We’re not incompetent.”  
  
“You’re not ready for this,” Dean blurted with such forcefulness that both Sam and the officer turned to look at him. His face was blank but there was an odd glint in his eyes that was nothing short of dangerous. “These things are vicious and nasty and came out of hell itself and if you don’t watch out, it’s going drag you down with it.”  
  
The officer folded his arms over his chest and Sam knew they were in for it. There were a finite number of things normal people could trust without seeing them for themselves and Dean had overplayed their hand. “Get out of my crime scene or I swear to God I’ll have both of you locked up.”  
  
“You can’t handle this,” Dean said, voice rising. His face was twisted in panic. “Don’t you get that? You’re in over your head and if you make one wrong move it’s going to kill you too.”  
  
“Come on, Dean,” Sam said, catching him by the shoulder and guiding him back and out of the house as fast as he could. “We’ve got to go.”  
  
Dean snarled, trying to twist out of his grip. “He’s going to die, if he’s not careful. He’s going to die and he sure as hell can’t go  _down there._ ”  
  
“It’s all right, Dean,” Sam said, soothingly. “We’ll find it first.”  
  
He got them all the way out of the house and back into the harsh sunlight of the afternoon without further incident, Dean getting calmer as they got farther away from the body. Sam thought they were finally in the clear when they saw the Impala but a car from the county sheriff’s office pulled up and a uniformed officer climbed out. Sam nodded curtly at him, maneuvering Dean toward the car, but Dean stopped short, sticking to the spot as if he’d spontaneously grown roots, staring at the officer in abject horror. “No,” he muttered. “No. I’m not going back there.”  
  
And suddenly Sam’s arms were full of writing, Dean, arms flailing in every direction, an elbow catching Sam in the chin, another in the stomach. He didn’t let go.  
  
The officer looked at them strangely and asked, “What’s wrong with him?”  
  
Sam found the lie springing immediately to his lips. He didn’t think. He didn’t feel guilty. He just lied. “Oh, my friend here has these episodes. I’ve got to get back to the house and get him his meds. The flashing lights upset him.”  
  
“You two new in town?”   
  
“I’m not going back!” Dean screamed. “You’re not taking me back.”  
  
Something in the officer’s eyes flashed and something in Sam’s mind clicked. “Christo,” he said.   
  
The officer hissed as if he’d been struck and an inky blackness seeped steadily into his eyes. Dean lunged left and into the driver’s seat of the car. Without even thinking Sam dashed around the car and into the passenger’s seat. Dean hit the acceleration the second Sam shut the door, plowing straight into the officer’s stomach. The force of the blow knocked the demon off it’s feet and sent Sam’s head snapping back and forward with the force of the whiplash. Dean slipped the car in reverse, roaring back and onto the road. “Holy shit,” Sam said. “You killed him! You killed him.”  
  
Dean put the car back into drive and roared forward and up the street. Sam was breathing hard and in the rearview mirror, he caught sight of the figure pushing himself to his feet and staggering into the cop car to take after them. Dean drove the impala forcefully, drifting around the corners and skidding on the asphalt. He got to the motel in the a quarter of the time it had taken them normal, double parking and dashing into the room before Sam even had the chance to react.   
  
The lights were off in the motel room, which was just as well because Sam could see the lights flickering on the fast food place across the street anyway. Dean was standing tensely next to the bed, an iron knife clutched in his right hand. There was a book on the bed. He barely looked at Sam before he said, “Page is marked.”  
  
“What the hell are you talking about?” Sam said. “We’ve got to get out of here. Someone must have seen that!”  
  
“I’m not going back,” Dean said. “And if we leave now he’ll find me. They’re like vampires. They’ll never let go once they’ve got a bead on me.”  
  
“They’re going to find us,” Sam repeated. “It’s going to come here and rip us to shreds.”  
  
Dean smirked dangerously. “Let it try.”  
  
Sam could hear sirens now, impossibly close, screaming just outside the room. Dean’s grip on the knife tightened. Sam felt oddly heady, adrenaline flowing into his veins, his fingers tingling in the anticipation of a confrontation. He was overcome by the growing certainty that this was how he was going to die. That he would be torn to shreds by a demon. He wondered if this was how Jessica felt in her last moments. He wondered if this had happened to Dean right before he was dragged into hell.   
  
The door burst open, torn from its hinges like it was made of paper. Sam felt himself break into a cold sweat. “C’mon,” Dean muttered, crouching down, knife extended in front of him. “Come and get me you fucker. I dare you. I’ll tear you the fuck apart. ”  
  
The demon snarled, stalking forward in the officer’s uneven gait. Sam could see a piece of bone protruding from the left wrist, an injury from the collision with the Impala, but the demon didn’t seem to notice, didn’t seem to feel any pain. Sam found himself reaching for the weapons bag, for a shotgun or a knife or something that didn’t make him feel so worthless. He feels like a deer caught in the headlights as a huge semi-truck barreled toward him, unable to move.   
  
The thing took another step forward, grin twisting up its face. The eyes looked even darker in the shadows and then it stopped in its track, reeling backwards as if it had run into a solid wall. Dean smirked, looking up at the intricate symbol he’d drawn on the ceiling. “Gotcha.”


	7. Chapter 7

A devil’s trap. Sam remembered jotting down notes on it during his research binge at Uncle Bobby’s place. Demons couldn’t get out of Devil’s Traps. They had to stay there until the seal was broken. It was ideal for exorcisms, offering some small measure of safety in an otherwise impossibly dangerous task. “Dean,” Sam said, staring at the snarling demon. “Dean, what are we going to do when someone notices this?”  
  
The door was yawning wide open. There weren’t a lot of people in the motel, but someone was going to notice something of this magnitude. Dean circled the demon, eyeing it coldly. “Start reading, Sammy. Page is marked.”  
  
“Dean,” the demon snarled. “Oh, Dean, Dean, Dean. You were always one of my favorites. When we get back, I’m going to enjoy peeling the flesh from your bones.”  
  
“You’ll never get the chance.”  
  
“Oh, they’ll be nowhere to run before long, Dean-o,” the demon said jovially. “Hell’s bleeding out into the real world and there’s going to be no turning back.”  
  
“Read, Sam!” Dean barked.  
  
Sam found the page labeled Rituale Romanum and started stumbling his way through the Latin. “Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio—”  
  
“Careful with the pronunciation there,” the demon cautioned. “A wrong syllable sends me to Maui instead of Hell.”  
  
“Don’t listen to it,” Dean cautioned. “You’re doing fine. Keep reading.”  
  
When Sam was a kid, Uncle Bobby had always pushed for him to take Latin in school but Sam had never seen the use of a dead language. He’d taken Spanish all through high school and into his freshman year of college. He’d picked it up quickly, conjugating not quite instantaneously, but close enough to fake it. He’d stopped taking language all together when he’d settled in pre-law. He remembered Uncle Bobby’s mild annoyance, the way a Latin-English dictionary had found its way into his school books and wondered if Bobby knew he’d somehow make his way here. “Infernalis adversarii, omnis legio, omnis congregatio, et secta diabolica.” “Perditionis venenum propinare. Vade, satana, inventor et magister omnis fallaciae, hostis humanae salutis—“  
  
“I ripped your father to shreds,” the demon said, staring at Dean. “I told him where you were and then I tore his heart out. Hard to pick which one hurt him more.”  
  
Dean didn’t blink. Maybe it was a blessing he didn’t remember. Couldn’t picture a face mirroring his own as a monster tore it to shreds. “Demons lie,” he said. “You’re going back to hell no matter what you say.”  
  
“I’ll get back out,” the demon said. “The walls between worlds are starting to crumble. Hell’s going to swallow earth.” The thing frowned. “Or maybe the other way around. Either way, there’s blood to be spilt. It’s going to be like Christmas morning.”  
  
Dean was circling the demon slowly, glaring daggers into the thing’s black eyes. The demon was hunched in on itself, breathings coming in quick bursts. The sheriff’s borrowed face was twisted into a grin. He leered in Sam’s direction. “Poor little Jessica was just an early victim.  
  
Sam’s breath caught in his throat. For a second he couldn’t move.  
  
“For fuck’s sake, Sam,” Dean growled. “Stop listening and start reading.”  
  
The page was starting to blur in Sam’s vision, the words bleeding into one another as his tongue tied itself into knots. “Humiliare sub potenti manu dei, contremisce et effuge, invocato a nobis sancto—“ he stumbled through the words. He could feel them heavily on his lips, thick syllables smeared with magic. The trick was pushing them into the correct formation, nailing the pronunciation without ever hearing it before. “Et terribili nomine, quem inferi tremunt. Ab insidiis diaboli, libera nos, domine. Ut ecclesiam tuam secura tibi facias libertate servire, te rogamus, audi nos.”  
  
“Your father bleed too, Sammy,” the demon hissed and Sam’s neck snapped up from the book to look her in the eyes. “Oh, I’ll bet you didn’t know that. Your daddy went and got himself killed when you were just a little boy. Thought hunting was more important then family. I heard all about it. Every knows how daddy Winchester left poor baby Sammy all alone.”  
  
There was something clenching in Sam’s throat. He lost his place in the book, fumbling for the next word. He tried to remind himself that his life wasn’t bad at all. It wasn’t like he’d grown up in a foster home. He’d had Uncle Bobby. He’d had a good life. He’d found Jess. He’d gone to Stanford. It had been a pretty damn good life before it all burned away.  
  
“And the worst part is your dad knew exactly what he was doing,” the demon said. “Don’t misread that for a second. He knew what he was hunting and he knew damn well that he wasn’t coming back.”  
  
“Demons lie,” Dean said, grabbing Sam by the shoulders. “Demons lie all the time. Stop listening and sent it back to hell.”  
  
“You earned that place in hell, Dean,” the demon said. “Just as much as I ever did. Why don’t you ask your friend there to send you back as well?”  
  
Dean rounded on the demon, face blazing with almost incoherent rage. “I’m not going back there!”  
  
Sam’s brain had blanked completely. His mouth was working but he couldn’t force a single syllable out. The demon smiled, black eyes impossible huge in the fading afternoon light. “Hunters are a dying breed, aren’t they, Dean? I doubt this one makes it a year.”  
  
Dean turned around and snatched the book from Sam’s hand, taking up the ritual from the place Sam left off, “Te rogamus audi Dominicos sanctae ecclesiae.” The Latin sounded thick and grating on his tongue. His voice sounded even rougher then it had his first day back.   
  
The demon twitched, a huge shudder that sent all his limbs jerking in different dimensions. His breath was coming in short barking gulps. His eyes were jet black. Sam found himself stepping back almost unconsciously because two weeks ago he would have sworn up and down that this wasn’t real.   
  
“You’re all going to burn!” the demon howled.   
  
“Terogamus audi nos!” Dean read, voice rising with every word.  
  
The demon shuddered again, threw its head back and screamed as a thick cloud of black smoke forces its way through the officer’s throat and out into the real world. Sam watched in horror imagining that it was him. Imagining the demon ramming itself down Sam’s throat and wearing his skin like a suit.   
  
When the smoke evaporated, transported back into hell, the body collapsed to the floor, blood spilling from his mouth. “Shit,” said Dean. “Looks like he’s dead.”  
  
“Did the demon do this?” Sam asked. His stomach churned. If he’d eaten anything in the past twelve hours, he was sure he would have lost it right then and there.   
  
“Maybe,” Dean said, taking the man’s pulse. “It could have been anything. Might have even been the Impala. The demon was keeping the body alive.”  
  
The impala. The collision that Sam had nearly forgotten about in the rush of the exorcism. He felt sick with guilt. There had been a person in there and he hadn’t even noticed. “Dean,” he said. “Dean, we just killed a guy.”  
  
“It was us or him,” Dean said. He picked the corpse up but both ankles and dragged him into the room, shoving him under the bed and leaving a bloody trail in his wake. “It was the right thing to do.”  
  
Dean busted out of Hell. Sam shivered. Dean busted out of Hell and he didn’t see people as people anymore. Had that been product of the torture or had he always been like this? Was he that cold before he was sent to the pit?  
  
He didn’t know anything about this man like he hadn’t known anything about Mason. This was dangerous. This was madness. He should have followed Chris’s lead and got the hell out of this life. He should have holed up in Uncle Bobby’s house and waited it out with someone he could trust.   
  
Dean was fidgeting, fingers clenched tight around the hilt of his knife. “We should get out of here.”  
  
“Yeah,” Sam agreed. “There are going to be cops all over here.”  
  
Dean glanced back up at him, mild surprise coloring his features. “ Yeah, them too.” He grabbed the bag of weapons off the floor.   
  
Sam, panic mounting, spurred himself into action, grabbing various clothes from around the world and the books he’d been using for research from the tiny end table. He hesitated at the door, thinking,  _we should wipe our prints off, clean up, make it so there was nothing to tie them to the scene._ Then he remembered his own name on the credit card on the counter and realized just how screwed he really was. He shuffled the books in his arm and stepped over the doorframe. Dean was already loading the weapons back in the car. Sam walked up beside him and threw the books and the clothes inside. He didn’t meet Dean’s eyes, couldn’t look at him without hearing the echo of the demon’s voice,  _You earned that place in hell, Dean. Just as much as I ever did._  
  
Behind them there was the sudden roar of sirens and Sam felt his body tense anticipating a horde of cops, a SWAT team coming to that them both out, but it didn’t come. Instead a pair of fire trucks came whirring down the road, headed back toward the heart of town where there had been four murders by people they’d assumed were possessed this week alone. “Dean,” Sam said. He could see the beginnings of the black plumes of smoke not a mile away. “Dean, I think there’s a fire.”  
  
“We’ve got to go,” Dean said, slipping into the driver’s side door.   
  
Sam nodded once and pulled open the door to the passenger’s side. Dean put the car in gear and went roaring out of the parking lot, putting the corpse, the fire, this town in your rearview mirror.  
  
“You’re going the wrong way,” Sam said. “We’re supposed to be investigating the fires.”  
  
“I’m not going back,” Dean said and the Impala’s speedometer climbed up past ninety.  
  


________________________________________________________________________

  
  
They slept in the car that night. Sam didn’t know if it was to give his battered credit card a rest or that Dean only ever seemed to sleep soundly stretched out in the impala’s back seat. Dean was out like a light within minutes, but Sam couldn’t think of anything but the sheriff belching black smoke and the way his empty body toppled gracelessly to the ground.   
  
Sam wasn’t going to sleep that night no matter what he did so he stayed in the passenger’s seat of the car, rooting through the glove box. He found himself staring at the letter again, wondering who Johnny was and who might have owned this car before it had earned its permanent place in Uncle Bobby’s salvage yard. He pulled out the rusted metal lock box out from the car and set it careful on his lap. He tried pulling at the edges but there was nowhere to get a grip. Frowning, he readjusted his grip, searching for some sort of leverage. He didn’t find in.   
  
Then struck by inspiration, he leaned over the driver’s seat and pulled the trunk release button. In the back seat, Dean snored and rolled over, one arm lolling over the seat and grazing the floor of the car. Sam took the lockbox in his hand and cracked open the door to slip outside and into the cool air. They were in Nevada now, or at least somewhere in the nebulous expanses that was in the American Midwest. Sam had lost track of where they were and where they were going back when his life and Stanford had gone up in flames.  
  
It was a cold night. Late November. It might have even December by then. Sam felt like he’d been on the road months rather then weeks. The minutes had bleed into hours and the hours straight on into days.   
  
Sam pulled the Impala’s trunk open, shivering in the chill of the night. With shaking figure he pulled a knife out of their weapons bag and unsheathed it, examining the glint of the blade in the moonlight. Then he took the blade to the small grove in the lock box, working it slowly back and forth until the whole thing sprang open in a shower of rust. Sam carefully sheathed the knife and tipped the contents of the box out and onto the top of the impala’s truck. There were dozens of tiny plastic pieces, all more or less the same size as a driver’s license.  
  
They all belong to a different governmental agency, FBI, CIA, the Forest Ranger, various police departments. They were well past expiration date; most of them listed the time issued in the eighties. All of them bore a different name. Sam recognized some of them as members of old rock bands, character out of television shows but others he didn’t recognize at all.  
  
The pictures he did recognize. It was the same face smirking up off of the badges. The face that proclaimed itself a member of the FBI, the CIA, the person who called himself Sammy Hagar, John Bonham and a dozen other names. The face was younger then the one Sam was used to, infinitely less battered, but it was still recognizable.   
  
Sam flipped through fake badge after fake badge and on every card, Dean’s face smiled back.


	8. Chapter 8

Sam didn’t sleep the rest of the night, just stared at the box of IDs and tried to do the calculations in his head. These IDs were more then twenty years old and Dean didn’t look that much older then the pictures. Which meant Dean had been in hell for twenty years or more. That meant Dean had been in Hell almost as long as Sam had been alive. And before that... well Sam didn’t know much more then Dean himself did. The collection of fake IDs seemed to suggest he was some sort of confidence man, but the memories that had resurfaced all seemed to be about hunting.   
  
That didn’t mean he was a bad person though. Sam kept having to remind himself that Uncle Bobby hadn’t been as squeaky clean as he liked to pretend and there had to be hunters who weren’t cut from the same mold as Mason. The sun crawled up the horizon spilling light into the car as Dean yawned himself awake. Sam scrambled to put the box back in the glove compartment but then paused when he realized this was going to be news for Dean who’d lost everything he’d known about his old life.   
  
“What you got there, Sam?” Dean asked.   
  
Sam handed him the box wordlessly, watching as calloused hands flipped through ID after fake ID. His expression didn’t change much through the entire ordeal, remaining one of quiet concentration until he reached the last one, looked up and said, “I don’t think my real name’s in here at all.”  
  
His voice was quavering just a little. Sam felt like he’d been slammed in the chest. He’d made things worse. Even if Dean was a con man in his past life, Hell was surely punishment enough to pay for those sins. “Too bad they’re not more up to date,” Sam said. His voice sounded funny to his own ears. His throat was starting to clench. “We could have used these earlier.”  
  
Dean tossed the remainder of the identification in the box. “Hey, look on the bright side.” He unconsciously stroked the interior of the car. “This baby may actually be my ride.”   
  
Sam laughed and shook his head, completely missing the troubled look that crossed Dean’s face. “You think maybe Uncle Bobby knew you?” Sam asked. “I mean he did have the car for going on twenty years.”  
  
Dean shrugged. “You could always ask him.”  
  
Even after all this time, Sam still felt the sting of the statement. Can still hear Uncle Bobby’s dying words,  _Sam there are things out there, thing coming from the dark—_  
  
“Uncle Bobby died a few years ago,” Sam said. “Hunting accident. I get the feeling that it might really have been a  _hunting accident._ ”  
  
“You’re new to this aren’t you?” Dean asked. “No offense, but you don’t seem like the hard core hunting type.”  
  
“Yeah,” Sam admitted, folding his hands into his lap. “Only been at it for about a week before I ran into you. Mason wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement for hunters.”  
  
“What happened?” Dean asked. He placed the box to his side, sitting up and rubbing at his eyes. “No one gets into this without a reason.”  
  
Sam pressed his own eyes shut trying to force back the memories of Jess and Stanford. “A few weeks ago I came into my apartment at school and found my girlfriend on the ceiling. The next thing I knew damn near the entire campus was up in flames.” He took a deep breath, forcing the air out of his lungs, forcing his body to relax. He opened his eyes. “What was it for you?”  
  
When he opened his eyes, Dean was frowning. Not the frustrated frown of someone with a memory just out of reach but something thoughtful and just a little bit afraid.   
  
“What is it, Dean?” Sam asked. “Is anything wrong?”  
  
“I don’t remember,” Dean said. There was a thickness to his voice that Sam hadn’t heard before. “I think it was a long time. Me and my dad...”  
  
“Your dad?” Sam asked. This was the most personal information Dean had ever volunteered. “You remember anything about him.”  
  
Dean pressed the palms of both hands up against his eyes and bent at the waist. Sam watched him, unable to tear his eyes away. Finally Dean straightened back up and said, “I think we hunted together. I don’t remember if he was there when I---“ He cuts off abruptly and pushed the car door open, taking the two steps outside before climbing back into the driver’s seat. “He’s probably dead now. Twenty years is forever for a hunter. If he’d have made it, he’d be pushing seventy now.”  
  
“We could look him up,” Sam offered. “I’m sure it wouldn’t be—“  
  
“I don’t remember his name and I don’t remember my name,” Dean said. “The only thing I can do is keep hunting.”  
  


_______________________________________________________________________

  
  
And there was no shortage of things to hunt. In Denver they took out a nest of vampires and Sam broke two fingers. In Peoria there were four bodies found completely eviscerated and they traced it to a trio of demons with black eyes and knowing smirks. Sam learned to tune them out complete. He stopped flinching every time a barbed word shot his way.   
  
The world was changing alongside him. Every town they entered seemed to have a bulletin board of people looking for lost loved ones. The smell of smoke seemed to have pervaded the atmosphere clinging to everyone and everything around it. At night Sam dreamed of Jessica, of Stanford, of people he’d never seen in towns he’d never heard of and woke up in a cold sweat with a twisting knot forming in his stomach. Dean didn’t sleep soundly unless he was in the car. He clawed the sheets of beds, thrashing against some invisible foe. Sam tried to wake him up a few times but all he ever got for his troubles were blows the face as Dean acted quickly and remorselessly. He asked the same question every single time he woke up: “Am I out?”  
  
Sam said, “Yeah, Dean, you’re out,” every single time, but at the same time he had to wonder. The sky was taking on a vaguely greenish tinge and sometimes when Sam was sleeping, he could swear he heard screams in the distance.   
  
“It’s like the gates are opening,” Dean told him one day. “Not all the way but enough for some of Hell to slip out.”  
  
Slip out like Dean himself had slipped out. Sam refused to point that out so he just memorized the exorcism and started stealing holy water from the every church he passed.  
  
People were starting to notice the monsters. Sam remembered Mason saying,  _When the civilians start noticing, you know things have started to blow up._ On the six o’clock news the female anchor tore her male counterpart’s throat out in front of millions on live television and then the station went dead for two weeks. When they roll into Boise and try conning their way into the police station, the on duty cop asked if they were hunters. Dean looked at him, mouth hanging open but Sam quickly answered in the affirmative. “Thank God,” the cop said. “We’ve been waiting for someone to show up. I’ve got no idea what I’m dealing with here.”  
  
They were dealing with possession. Or, more accurately, an epidemic of possessions. Sam did four exorcisms a day for a week and slept roughly six hours in that entire time. Dean looked a little worse each demon they found, face falling with every word they threw in his direction,  _Soon now, Dean. Whole world’s going to burn. Not even going to find him before you watch him die._  
  
When the possessions leveled off, they stayed a few extra days, teaching the cops how to go about an exorcism and the basics of fighting demon. In exchange, the police department cut them a check for their expenses. Dean took the check said thank you and managed to work Christo into the conversation six times before being satisfied that this was real. Before they left town, they both got inked, a small symbol on the left shoulder, almost invisible amidst the fresh scars. Sam had found it in one of Uncle Bobby’s old books, showed it to Dean and two hours later he’d been trying not to rub at the fresh tattoo marring his skin.   
  
Dean could see demons. Sam recognized it somewhere in between the first exorcism and Toledo. He could pick demons out of a crowd even before they went for the holy water or said Christo. Sam didn’t ask about it. Didn’t know how but he felt bad for Dean. He didn’t even have the option of ignorance and while Sam still wanted out of this life at the end of this all, Dean was stuck permanently, held fast by twisted faces and rotting souls. Still, Dean managed to never be in the same town as the fire, almost like he was afraid of the flames sucking him back into hell. They rolled into town just after the last flames had been quenched or just before the town burned.   
  
They were in some nowhere town in Tennessee when they got their first big shock. The town was more or less abandoned when they got there. The ash from the flames settled heavily on the ground. A bar was the only building left standing. Dean was fidgeting as they drove past it but Sam insisted they pulled over to check it out. He rounded the car, propping open the brand new weapons trunk with ease and he tried not to think of just how many laws they were breaking with this arsenal. Sam made it a point to organize the weapons after he cut his palm on an unsheathed knife back in Idaho and now the trunk was scarily organized. Dean had the habit of throwing things everywhere in barely controlled chaos, but Sam liked it better neat and organize.   
  
Sam picked out his favorite gun and a bottle of holy water and tried not to think about how he actually had a favorite gun when a month ago he didn’t want to touch the things. Dean looked over his shoulder, as if expecting that they were being watched and grabbed a pair of iron knifes. “I don’t like this town, Sammy,” he said.   
  
“We’re here aren’t we,” Sam said, walking toward the scorched building. “Might as well check it out.”  
  
He pushed open the door and went inside. The old bar was still mostly intact, all walls stand, the floors in absolutely no danger of caving it. The place was dark despite the green haze from the sky filtering in through the smoke stained windows and it took Sam’s eyes a minute to adjust to the light. He felt something graze his forehead, a wire of some kind and he ducked habitually, more interested in the room’s interior. There was something in the shadows, suspended about midway between the ceiling and the floor. Sam cocked his gun, anticipating an angry spirit or even one of the shadow men.  
  
Then his eyes brought the figure into focus and he stumbled back in shock.  
  
It was a man.   
  
Or at very least it had been a man at some point in time. Sam didn’t think he was alive anymore. He was suspended by a half dozen meat hooks. There was one going through his shoulder, another through his side. One at the palm of each hand and sinking into the tender flesh of the calf. There was blood dribbling out of his mouth and drying on his chin. The man’s mouth was open but he wasn’t breathing. It looked like the last thing he’d done was scream. “Dean,” Sam said. His voice was shaking. “Dean, what the hell does a thing like that?”  
  
He turned around. Dean was staring at the sight with a slightly open mouth. His whole body was shaking in violent tremors and for a wild second, Sam was sure he was going to pass out. “Dean?”  
  
“We should get him down,” Dean said thickly. “We can’t just leave him like that.”  
  
“Yeah,” Sam allowed. It had been a while since Dean let him see this level of weakness. He hadn’t lost control like this since the first exorcism. He was starting to seem normal. He’d looked at some of the most gruesome murders Sam could imagine without even blinking but this sight, this scene had sent him quaking. “Yeah, we can do that.”  
  
Sam approached the man, took a deep breath and reached out to touch his leg. The light contact on the exposed flesh wasn’t enough to send him spinning in his place. The skin was cool to the touch but the blood was still slightly damp. He hadn’t been dead for long. He’d just been hanging here, stretched taunt by meat hooks, unable to move. Sam swallowed and tried to unhook his left leg but he heard something in the foundation of the house shift as he tried. Frowning, Sam let go and took a step back to examine the scene again. And then he saw it.  
  
It was the man holding the building in place. Unhooking any limb would send the walls crashing down all around him. “Dean,” Sam said. “I don’t think I can—“  
  
He blinked. Dean was gone. He caught the barest flash of a person leaving the building through the open door and sprinted out to catch up. He found Dean three blocks away, collapsed on all fours emptying the contents of his stomach onto the ash covered pavement. “What’s wrong, Dean?” Sam asked.  
  
Dean looked up at him with a glassy, unfocused gaze. “I’ve got to get out of here,” he said. “I’m not going back.”  
  
“No one’s trying to take you back to hell, Dean,” Sam said.   
  
Dean pushed himself backward, sitting heavily on the curb and pulling his knees towards his chest. “They’re not taking me back,” he muttered again.  
  
Sam crouched down hesitantly next to him and said, “They’re not taking you back Dean. I won’t let them.”  
  
They’d reached something in the weeks on the road, not a friendship by a symbiosis. When he woke up, the first thing Sam did was check for Dean. He started noticing thing about him almost unconsciously: the nervous ticks when he was flashing back to hell, his tendencies in a fight, his standard operating cover stories. They fit into each other’s strengths, filled in their weaknesses and if it weren’t for the world going to Hell, Sam might have been all right with it. It was as close as he’d ever had to a family.   
  
Then in Guthrie everything changed. They weren’t headed anywhere particular, just driving through. Dean could usually tell when there was something wrong with a town without even getting out of the car.   
  
The first two blocks of Guthrie are dead quiet, deserted almost, but that’s not that strange. With the television blaring thoughts about the end of the world, no one really trusted anyone outside their own house. “Another ghost town,” Sam muttered.   
  
 _Demons got them first,_  he thought.  _We were too late._  
  
“Not quite,” Dean said, putting a foot on the break as the impala idled noisily. He extended an arm down the street. “Look.”  
  
There was a guy tearing down the sidewalk, continuously glancing over as he ran. He was a short guy with dark curly hair and an oversized jacket with fraying sleeves. “What the hell?”  
  
He spotted the car, look of unbelievable relief springing into an otherwise unremarkable face. He skidded to a stop in front of the impala, darting over to the driver’s side and banging on the window. “Hold on,” Dean grumbled, rolling the window. “Christo,” he said by way of greeting.  
  
The guy didn’t even blink. “You’ve got to let me in.”  
  
“Yeah,” Dean said, reaching over to unlock the door to the back seat. “Sure, come on.”  
  
Sam stared at him. Dean didn’t like strangers. He was silent and guarded and unwilling to let his guard down for even a second. Sam slowly reached into the glove box for his gun. The guy clamored into the backseat, breathing heavily. “Drive,” he said.  
  
“All right,” Dean said and puts the car into drive with a jerky, not-quite-Dean motion.   
  
Sam pulled the gun, spinning in his seat and aiming it squarely at the guys forehead. Very deliberately he said, “What the hell are you.”  
  
The guy’s hands rise upward in a defensive, slightly panicked motion. “Put the gun down,” he said. And when Sam didn’t comply, his eyes widened and he tried again. “Put the gun down.”  
  
“Shoot him, Sam,” Dean said. He ran a stop sign and two stop lights, eyes never leaving the road.  
  
“My name is Andy,” the guy sputtered. “And I’m in trouble. I swear to god I’m not going to hurt you. Put the gun down.”  
  
Sam could hear the inflection in the order, see the strange glint in his eyes. He thought of Dean’s immediate obedience and the impala roaring through the empty streets of Guthrie. “Powers of suggestion,” Sam said, slipped the safety off the gun. “Haven’t seen a demon that can do that yet.”  
  
“Demon?” Andy sputtered. “I’m not a demon!”  
  
“He’s not,” Dean confirmed. “But things that can do that aren’t quite human anyway. Shoot him.”  
  
Sam felt his finger tensing on the trigger. He trusted Dean. He liked Dean but at the same time they didn’t know a thing about this guy other then the fact that he was scared. And Sam didn’t much like the idea of killing someone one based on a recommendation from someone who had gone to hell.  
  
“Put the gun down,” Andy said putting that special inflection in his voice that tickled something in the back of Sam’s mind.  
  
“Doesn’t seem like it works on me,” Sam said.  
  
Andy’s face creased into a frown and Sam felt a sharp pain shooting through his temple. He grunted and tried to blink back the images and for a second, Andy’s pale face swam in and out of focus and then he lost everything to the images.


	9. Chapter 9

Sam clutched at his head, trying to cope with the sudden sensory overload. The car was gone and he was caught in a swarm of foreign images.  _There were two men (brothers?) in a field and a girl on a bridge. One of them was stronger then the other and it was just a push, a few words and the girl was falling and the other one (it looked like Andy) started screaming. Fire, fire, everything’s on fire and a man with yellow eyes watched and laughed as—in Peoria, a girl slaughtered her fiancé quietly without warning as the city around her bursts into flames and—here in Guthrie, Dean stood and listened as a man said, ‘now take the gun and put it in your mouth...’_  
  
Sam screamed as reality jumped back into focus all at once. They were on the side of the road, Dean had a hand on either shoulder trying to calm him down. Andy ran a hand through his dark curly hair. “Whoa, man. Just--what the  _fuck_  was that?”  
  
“What did you do to him!” Dean roared. He dropped his hands from Sam’s shoulders and rounded on Andy. For the first time, Sam realized that Dean was definitely not a small man. He drew himself up, drew his chest up, his voice lowered to a growl. There was a dangerous glint in his eyes, dark and cold that could only have come from years in hell. “Whatever the fuck you did to him, stop!”  
  
“I didn’t do anything!” Andy squeaked. “Look, I promise, it’s not me!”  
  
“Tell me one good reason why I shouldn’t send you down to hell,” Dean growled. “He’s the only family I got.”  
  
Family. Sam noticed the word even through the haze of pain. Dean was family and that meant something. He hadn’t really had family since Uncle Bobby passed. “Dean,” he said. “Dean I’m fine. He didn’t do anything to me.”  
  
Dean spun back around, offering Sam a hand up. Sam took it gratefully, hauling himself to his feet. “If it wasn’t him, what the hell was it?”  
  
Sam rubbed his forehead. “Sometimes, I get these—“ He stopped, started again. “Sometimes I get these dreams and sometimes, they come true.” He rubbed at his forehead. “That’s the first time it’s ever happened when I was awake.”  
  
“Like visions?” Andy said. Sam turned toward him. He looked impossibly small in the still air. “Sometimes it starts with visions.”  
  
“Visions,” Dean repeated. “No, no.” His eyes were open in incredulity. The stabilizing hand on his back was gone and he backpedaled away from Sam at top speed, stumbling toward the impala and into the driver’s seat.  
  
Sam staggered after him, putting a hand on the car just as it skidded off the curb and into the street. He jogged after it a few steps but the car didn’t turn around or show any signs of stopping. He stared after it in a mute sort of shock as the impala disappeared around a corner, leaving Sam completely alone. It hadn’t hurt this much when Mason ditched him. Hell the only thing he could think that came close to this was the day Uncle Bobby died or the day Jess and Stanford went up in smoke.  
  
Here, in the abandoned streets of Guthrie, Sam looked at the greenish sky and felt more helpless then he ever had before. Then there was suddenly a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, are you all right?”  
  
“Yeah,” Sam lied.   
  
“I’m sorry,” Andy said. “But can you please tell me what the hell is going on?”  
  
Sam rubbed at his temples and turned around, forcing himself to focus on the current problem. The last vision or whatever it was, had lead him to Dean. The one before had saved his life. “Do you have a brother?” Sam asked.  
  
“How the hell do you know that?” Andy sputtered stepping back. “I didn’t even know that until the world started falling apart.”  
  
“He killed someone, didn’t he,” Sam said. “A girl.” He closed his eyes, trying to remember. “She jumped--he pushed her to jump.”  
  
Andy looked just sick at the thought. “How the hell did you know that?” he repeated. “Who the hell are you anyway?”  
  
“Sam,” he answered. “I get these visions sometimes and it means something important is going to happen—“ He winced. “Have you ever seen a yellow-eyed man?”  
  
Andy’s eyes widened almost comically. “Webber talked about him. Right before he pushed Tracey—he said the yellow eyed man told him to do things and me, I’ve been having these dreams lately.” He blinked. “Or at least I was having them when I was still sleeping. See it’s this yellow-eyed man, he told me I was special. That I was chosen. He wants me to get this gun and take it to some place in the middle of nowhere so he can—“ Andy waved his arms in a gesture of helplessness. “I don’t know destroy the world or something. Not that it really needs much help.”  
  
“And are you going to?” Sam asked.  
  
“What?” Andy said. “Am I going to destroy the world? No! I live here. I like it here. There wasn’t anything wrong with the world.”  
  
“Why were you running?” Sam asked.   
  
“Webber,” Andy said, pulling at his hair. “My evil twin or something. I don’t know. Everything’s screwed up. He was trying to kill me. Something about the dude with the yellow eyes.”  
  
“Do you have any idea what this thing wants?” His mind was racing. A yellow-eyed man who was starting fires in Sam’s visions. Maybe this thing was what had started this whole thing, tearing down the border between hell and earth and spilling all the demons into the real world.  
  
“Something about a gun.” Andy frowned, looking more and more stressed out by the minute. “I don’t know what kind but I could probably draw it for you. Kept saying it was with some guy named Winchester.”  
  
“Winchester?” Sam repeated, all the color draining from his face. “You’re sure.”  
  
“Yeah,” Andy said. “Why? That mean something to you?”  
  
It couldn’t be a coincidence. The vision, this town, it meant something. It meant something big. He felt warm suddenly, heat rising like there were fires coming, just waiting for the spark. “My name is Sam Winchester,” he said.   
  
Andy paled. “Do you have the gun?”  
  
“No,” Sam said and then it hit him all at once. “But that means Dean does.”  
  
“That’s not good,” Andy said. “You know how people are trying to kill me?”  
  
“Yeah,” Sam said.  
  
Andy nodded. “It’s going to be like that but worse.”  
  


________________________________________________________________________

  
  
He couldn’t find Dean. He wasn’t anywhere. Sam was frantic. He knew Dean. Dean was skittish and rash and prone to explosions of violence and he couldn’t think someone like that could disappear this complete. But Guthrie was abandoned. There had been no fires here, no one burned alive on the ceilings, but still everyone had left. Andy followed him up and down the empty streets, pulling at his fraying sleeves. That in itself worried Sam. An hour ago, he’d had a gun pointed at Andy, ready and willing to pull the trigger.   
  
“Visions,” Andy said finally. “That’s got to suck.”  
  
Sam glanced over at him and kept walking. “Hasn’t been going on for long. Everything’s sucked lately.”  
  
“You don’t have to tell me that,” Andy said. “First this weird mind control thing, then some guy shows up saying he’s my brother. Next thing I know my girlfriend’s dead and he’s after me and the world’s on fire.”  
  
“Dean!” Sam called. “Dean!!”  
  
He wanted another vision. He would welcome the stabbing pain that came with it if that meant he’d know where Dean was. He wasn’t sure he could function without the other man at his side. Shadow man or not, Dean had provided him an anchor when he was dangerously close to losing it completely. He’d needed that sort of companionship when Jess had died and Chris had deserted him and Mason had proved himself psychotic.   
  
Like it or not, Dean was all he had to lean on right now and Dean had figured out the psychic thing and freaked. And it hurt. It hurt almost as much as the realization that Uncle Bobby had kept him in the dark for years, that his real father had left him with a near stranger and gone off to die on a hunt.  
  
Andy paused outside a warehouse. “Sam,” he said, extending a finger toward the tiny alley trailing into darkness. “Isn’t that the car?”  
  
It was the impala, cordoned off in the side of the warehouse, abandoned in a way Sam knew Dean would never abandon his only link to his life before. “Yeah,” Sam said. “Yeah that’s the car. Let’s go.”  
  
He started to move, but Andy didn’t budge. “No,” he said. “No, we can’t go in there.”  
  
“Why not.”  
  
“Webber’s in there,” Andy said. There’s a sick look on his face and he was swaying slightly as if the barest breeze would knock him over and knock him out. “I can feel him. It’s some sort of freaky twin thing. We have to go.”  
  
“Dean’s in there,” Sam said.  
  
“In case you haven’t noticed,” Andy said. “Dean left you. He saw what you were and he freaked. He wouldn’t do this for you.”  
  
Sam ignored the warning, tugging Andy’s sleeve. “It’s all right,” he said. “Dean will know what to do.”  
  
The warehouse is dusty and ill-made and light but random beams of light filtering in through broken windows. Dean was standing stiff as a board ten yards inside. Sam didn’t recognize the posture. He’d seen Dean curled up in fear, swaggering with false bravado, but never this stiff, like all his limbs had been cemented into that one position. “Dean,” Sam said, dropping his hold on Andy’s arm. “Dean!” In a few strides, he was at Dean’s side, searching for any signs of response.  
  
“He’s not going anywhere,” a new voice said. Sam’s head jerked up out of the shadows. The guy was small, Andy’s size with pale skin and light eyes and a plain face. Not threatening in the least. The kind of guy Sam’s eyes used to skate over during college. Something in his eyes flashed white as he said, “You’re not going anywhere either.”  
  
Sam recognized the inflection in the voice, the same tone Andy put into his voice when he was looking for obedience only a hundred times more forceful, more demanding. Sam froze in his place, playing along. If he thought his words held power over Sam he’d get cocky, he’d get stupid and Sam would have his chance.  
  
He learned that from Dean.  
  
“Webber!” Andy cried. “Webber, let them go! They didn’t do anything to you.”  
  
“Andy,” Webber said. His voice was completely calm. “Don’t you see? This is how we get to be together. You and me against the world just like it always should have been.”  
  
“The only way you and me are going to hang out is if we’re the only too left and we’re getting way to close to that.”  
  
“Everything’s going to be all right, brother,” Webber said. His voice was light and earnest, like he believed all this stuff he’d been fed. “The yellow-eyed man says all we need is that gun. It’s the key to everything.” He turned to Sam, creeping closer with those earnest blue eyes. Sam noticed a gun, Dean’s gun clasped in his left hand. “And I’ve heard Winchester has it.” His voice took on that special tone again, pushing in the depths of Sam’s mind but getting nowhere. “You’re Sam Winchester aren’t you.”  
  
Sam’s eyes flickered to Dean. He was breathing heavily, straining against whatever spell Webber held him with. His face was creased with pain or guilt or something different that Sam didn’t even recognized. “Yeah,” Sam said because there was no use in denying it. Dean had probably told him everything. “Yeah, I’m Sam Winchester.”   
  
“I’m looking for something,” Webber said. “An antique. A colt. Do you know where it is?”  
  
Sam shook his head. Dean took a shuddering gasp. “You already have a gun,” Sam said. “Why do you need another?”  
  
“Sam,” Andy said. “I’m not sure you know what you’re doing.”  
  
“Yeah, Sam,” Webber said. “Tell the truth.”  
  
“No,” Sam said. And it was the truth. If the gun was with him, it was in the trunk of the impala, but there was no way to know for sure. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  
  
“He doesn’t know anything,” Andy protested. “Neither of them do so let them go!”  
  
“What are you doing, Andrew?” Webber demanded, rounding on his brother. “Why are you siding with these people? You don’t even know them. I’m just trying to help you. The older one wants you dead.”  
  
“I’m siding with these people,” Andy spat, drawing up every spare inch of height, “because I’m sure as hell not siding with you.”  
  
“Oh,” Webber said with apparently genuine remorse. His face was creased into a frown as he raised the gun. “Then I’m really sorry it had to be this way.”  
  
Sam turned away a split second before the gun went off. But he heard it, the crack and then quieter, the splatter of blood and the dull thump of the body hitting the floor. Dean’s eyes were open wide, panicked. “I don’t know anything!” Sam screamed. “I swear to God, I don’t know where your stupid gun is!”  
  
“I’m really sorry to hear that,” Webber said and he sounded like he meant it. His voice was laced with thick grief. “I would have liked this to turn out some other way.”   
  
And quickly, smoothly, with a decisiveness Sam wasn’t sure he’d ever seen outside the movies, Webber turned toward him and Dean, squeezing off two shots in rapid succession. One meant for Dean and the other meant for him. Sam closed his eyes and screamed, “No!”  
  
He was waiting for the pain, waiting for the bullet to slice through his forehead cutting a hole through his brain and exploding out the other side. He never thought he would die like this. Not even when he’d started hunting. He thought it would be a demon ripping through his skin or a werewolf’s claw catching him by surprise or an angry spirit toppling him over a cliff. Not this.  
  
But the bullet never came. Sam cracked open his eyes and saw--hanging, suspended in front of him--a pair of bullets. One just before Dean’s face and the other inches in front of his own nose. His eyes widened slightly and both bullets dropped to the ground, bouncing off the concrete floors with a metallic ping. Webber looked at him with mild surprise. “What do you know,” he said. “You’re one of us too.” He approached Sam slowly, almost calculating.   
  
Sam didn’t like that idea. He didn’t want to be put in the same category as this murder with a gun and the yellow-eyed man in his vision. He just wanted to go back to Stanford and curl up in bed next to Jessica and sleep for the next ten years.  
  
Dean flexed his fingers rhythmically, there was a vein bulging in his neck. Webber past him, not even noticing him and as soon as he was out of eyesight, Dean lurched into action, seizing Webber by the neck and twisting hard.   
  
Sam could hear the crack resounding through the room, like someone taking a sledgehammer to a thick piece of wood. The head lolled strangely, face slipping in and out of shadows for a moment and then Dean let the body drop, toppling graceless a Sam’s feet, right next to the pair of bullets Sam had somehow stopped with his mind.   
  
Dean bent down and pried his gun from Webber’s slacking grip.  
  
“Oh my God,” Sam said, feeling sick. He bent double, clutching at his knees, dry heaving into the dusty ground. He looked up just far enough to catch a glimpse of what remained of Andy’s face. “Oh, God.”  
  
He looked up to see Dean standing over him, face colder. Slowly, he raised the gun level with Sam’s forehead and flicked the safety off. His voice was shaking. “What the hell are you?”


	10. Chapter 10

Sam stared cross-eyed down the barrel of the gun. “Dean,” he said. “What the hell is going on?”  
  
The gun was shaking. Something like terror crossed Dean’s features and not for the first time, Sam realized how close he was to coming unhinged. How close he’d been since Sam had first met him. “That wasn’t human,” Dean said. “Was this part of the plan?” His voice cracked. “Make me think I’m out? Make me trust you? Well, I figured it out this time and I’d kill you before I let you go through with it.”  
  
“I’m not a demon!” Sam said, indignantly. But he caught sight of the shining bullets lying on the concrete and something twisted in his stomach. Dean was right, that wasn’t human. That was unnatural just like Andy’s gift, just like Webber’s. Telekinesis or at least something like it. Somehow it was different then just catching glimpses of the future. Infinitely more dangerous. “Dean, you’ve got to trust me.”  
  
“Trust you,” Dean barked out a laugh. “Trust you, that’s rich. Tell me something, Sammy, did old yellow eyes send you?”  
  
“Yellow eyes,” Sam repeated. “What the hell are you talking about?”  
  
“The yellow-eyed demon,” Dean said slowly. “What, do you think I’m stupid? Did you think I wouldn’t figure it out?”  
  
“Figure what out?” Sam asked. “It’s me, Dean. It’s Sam. We’ve been traveling together for weeks. I’m not working with anyone but you.”  
  
“You’re a demon,” Dean hissed, pressing a hand to his forehead as if trying to keep the voices out. “You’re a demon and I never got out did I? I’m still there and you’ve been fucking with my head.”  
  
“You’re out,” Sam said. He tried to keep his voice calm but the gun was twisting his voice into higher and higher regions. “Dean, you got out.”  
  
“Shut up,” Dean roared. “I don’t want to hear it any more! You’re lying. You’re lying and you’re not ever going to get to Johnny.”  
  
His fingers tensed on the trigger and Sam saw his life flashing before his eyes, the letter reading  _Samuel J. Winchester, we are pleased to inform you that you have been..._ and the white flash of Jessica’s smile and Uncle Bobby on the hospital bed, writing in pain.  
  
He didn’t hear the crack of the gun, because Dean didn’t pull the trigger but suddenly, he felt an unbelievable heat building up all around him. He opened his eyes and noticed that the roof was on fire, showering smoking cinders all around them. Dean was screaming, but that wasn’t the worst part of it.   
  
Dean’s face looked almost like it was melting. Twisting into darkness and insubstantial shadows. His clothes were disintegrating into darkness, his arms barely looked real anymore. The gun clamored to the ground. _Hell,_ Sam realized. This was Hell sneaking up all around them and trying to pull Dean back down into the abyss.  
  
“Dean!” Sam screamed, lurching toward his feat in a blur of motion. He tried to grab Dean’s hand, fought to pull him back out, but it was like grasping at smoke. His face had lost all form. He didn’t look like Dean anymore, just an amorphous figure, like watching clouds on a sunny day. “Dean,” he screamed again. “Dean, you have to let me help you!”  
  
He grasped for a hand again and this time made contact with it. The texture was all wrong though. It felt like trying to grab water, undeniably there but impossible to hold. “You’ve got to trust me!”  
  
The hand in his seemed to solidify, like water freezing into ice only a thousand times warmer. Around them the warehouse had started burning as Hell seeped into the edges around the real world.   
  
And then he had it: a hand. Dean’s hand, solid and real and there. Sam pulled with all his might and Dean started taking shape again, coalescing into flesh and blood from a cloud of shadows and pain. Sam didn’t let go. He dragged Dean through the smoldering walls of the dilapidated warehouse as a glass window burst outward from the heat of the flames. The door out was burning but Sam didn’t slow down, just lowered his shoulder and bulled straight to the wall and into the green sky and abandoned streets of Guthrie, Oklahoma. He shoved Dean into the passenger’s seat of the impala and threw himself into the driver’s seat, fumbling for the keys in his pocket. The engine turned over twice before starting full force. Sam shifted into reverse and slammed his foot down on the accelerator, tearing out of the alleyway and onto his street as Highway to Hell blared out of the radio on top volume.   
  
In the passenger’s seat, Dean was shaking. Full body tremors that scared Sam more then any of the monsters he’d ever seen.  
  
He put Guthrie in the rearview mirror, breaking every highway rule he knew, tearing across country on dingy little back roads until, almost an hour later Dean said, “Pull over.”  
  
“What?” Sam asked.   
  
“I said pull over,” Dean’s voice rose in volume. “I need to get in the trunk.”  
  
Sam clenched his jaw but complied, gliding the impala toward the shoulder and the guide rail and putting it in park. Dean pushed the door open and scrambled out into the fresh air.   
  
It was just past twilight and raining lightly, the distant light from the setting sun only serving to bathe the abandoned highway in a dull green glow. Sam pushed his door open as well, circling around the car just in time to slam the trunk back shut as Dean tried to pry it open. He turned to face Sam, frustration etched into his features. “Seriously, Sam, what the hell?”  
  
“You really think I’m going to let you into a trunk full of weapons not even two hours after you pulled a gun on me?”  
  
“Look,” Dean said. “I’m sorry. Thanks for pulling me back out. I get that you’re on my side. You’re probably no a demon and you save my ass back there, but you’re going to have to trust me on this.”  
  
“Trust you?” Sam sputtered. He flayed his arms out wide, flaring his nostrils. “You want me to trust you after this? Dean, I don’t know a thing about you! In fact, the only think I know for sure is that you spent time in hell.”  
  
Dean shook his head, his face only dimly visible in the sun’s dying greenish light. “Don’t go there, Sam.”  
  
“And why shouldn’t I go there, Dean?” Sam shifted his feet. He was within striking distance from Dean but not close enough to earn the full brunt of a punch if this actually came to blows. “Why should I trust you if you earned yourself a spot in hell?”  
  
“You say that like you think only bad people go to hell.”  
  
“So what,” Sam snorted. The rain was picking up, plastering his hair to his face. “I’m supposed to believe you were some kind of saint.”  
  
“I don’t care what you believe,” Dean said. “It’s really none of your business what I did.”  
  
“But it is my business!” Sam exploded, pounding a fist into the impala’s trunk and sending a rack of pain shooting up his arm. “It’s been my business ever since I stopped Mason from putting an end to your sorry ass! So tell me!”  
  
“I sold my soul, all right?” Dean roared. His face was wet. Sam couldn’t tell if it was from the rain or tears. “I made a deal with some demonic son of a bitch and I gave up my soul and I’d do it again. Christ Sam, I wouldn’t even think before I’d make the same deal over.”  
  
Sam felt the anger seeping out of his bones. He’d heard of crossroads deals in his epic research on demons back at Uncle Bobby’s place. A demon who would offer you ten years with your heart’s desire in exchange for your soul and damnation. “When did you make the deal?” Sam asked. “When you were fifteen?”  
  
Dean barked out a harsh laugh. “Didn’t even give me ten years. I got a day to set my affairs straight and that was it. Can’t even remember what I did.”  
  
“What did you ask for?” Sam couldn’t quite look the older man in the eyes. Couldn’t phantom anything worth forfeiting your soul. Couldn’t contemplate an eternity in hell for just a wish.  
  
“I had a kid,” Dean said listlessly. The rain pouring down around him was almost louder then his voice. “His name was Johnny. He was six months old and I walked in on a demon in his nursery set on taking him away. Wanted him to be part of some demon army. So I made a deal. My life, my soul and Johnny grows up untouched. Off limits for this fucker. And I’d do it again.”  
  
“How long ago was this?” Sam asked. “Have you tried tracking him down?”  
  
Dean let out a wry laugh that was almost lost in the distant crackle of thunder. “No. I can’t. I don’t know how long it was. That’s the thing about hell. Just about everything gets burned out of you sooner or later.”  
  
“Come on, you’ve got to know something. There’s got to be something we can do.”  
  
“There’s nothing we can do,” Dean said. He bent over and unlocked the trunk, pulling it open. He started rooting through the mess of weapons. “Nothing at all. I don’t know where the kid is. I don’t know how old he is. I can’t even tell you for sure how long I was down there. I don’t even know what my last name is or if he even kept his. He’s better off without me anyway. No one wants an ex-resident of hell for a dad anyway. It’s like saying my old man was in jail only worse. I’m damaged goods.”  
  
Sam was quiet for a long time, unwilling to get back into the car, unwilling to let that moment pass without comment. He just stood there in the pouring rain, watching Dean dig through the trunk. “You’re not damaged goods,” he said finally but even as he did, he thought of the sheer fury in his face as he broke Webber’s neck. “I’m sure your kid would have been happy to have you as a dad.”  
  
“Yeah, well,” Dean huffed, coming up from the trunk with a small wooden box. “It’s too late for that now, isn’t it? The only thing I can do for Johnny now is kill that yellow-eyed son of a bitch before he has a chance to catch up with him.”  
  
“Yellow-eyed?” Sam repeated. There was something twisting in his stomach as he thought of Andy.  _See it’s this yellow-eyed man, he told me I was special._  
  
“Yeah,” Dean said. “Johnny’s six month old and that thing’s crouching over him, doing something to him.” He was shaking with rage. “I swear to God, I’m going to kill that thing. I don’t care if it sends me back to hell. That thing’s not going to get its hands on him.”  
  
“Dean, this yellow-eyed guy. Before he died, Andy told me he had people looking for us. Something about a gun. A colt.”  
  
There was a wolfish look in Dean’s eyes as his fingers latched on a small metal box dug out of the depths of the trunk. Under everything else. “The way I figure it,” Dean said. “I know every single weapon in here. But there were a few things in here before I started loading her up. This was one of them.” He held the box up for Sam to see. It didn’t look like much to his eyes, a small, black metal box with a simple key lock on the front and a few symbols he didn’t recognize on the side. “I thought it was a curse box at first,” Dean explained. “Now I’m not so sure. Look,” he pointed to on of the symbols etched into the side.   
  
“That’s a Devil’s trap,” Sam said, awed.  
  
“It’s a supernatural lockbox,” Dean confirmed. “No way in hell is a demon getting into this. If this gun is this dangerous in a demon’s hand, you can bet this is the best way to hide it.”  
  
Sam nodded, excitement mounting in his stomach, that heady feeling of adrenaline mixed with danger. This box could hold the key to everything, the reasons for what had gone wrong with his life. “We should get back in the car,” Sam observed. “We’re going to get it wet.”  
  
Dean nodded his agreement and they got back into the impala, dripping water all over the seats. If it were any other time, Sam though, Dean would have been appalled at the damage to his upholstery, but now he was too focused on the task at hand, picking the lock with a few pieces of wire he’d begun to assemble through the past month.   
  
After what seemed like eternity when the sun had disappeared completely, leaving no light but the interior of the impala, the box clicked and cracked itself open. “I’ve got it.”  
  
Sam leaned in close as Dean took the lid off the box almost reverently. Inside was a gun. It was small and compact with a wooden handle and symbols etched into the barrel, snaking all around. In the case next to it were three silver bullets with a similar design. There were slots open for other bullets but it didn’t look like anything had been there for a long time. What caught Sam’s eyes was a yellowed letter that fluttered out into Dean’s lap.   
  
Dean grabbed it, unfolding it like it was an ancient relic, in danger of shattering into a thousand pieces. He read it over to himself, face paling. “What does it say, Dean?” Sam asked.  
  
Hands shaking, Dean handed him the letter. Sam had to bend in close to read the smudged handwriting in the dim light.  
  


  
  
“John Winchester?” Sam asked. His voice cracked. The dates were right. Uncle Bobby had taken him in only about three days after that. He knew the date even if he didn’t know the circumstances. “You don’t think?”  
  
“Winchester ain’t exactly the most common name around,” Dean said. “This must have been right before I—“  
  
“It sounds like you might have known my dad,” Sam said. His grip had tightened exponentially on the letter. He’d never had a tangible connection to his father. Never known. “I mean he trusted you enough to send you this, right? You might have hunted together.”  
  
“I. Don’t. Know.” Dean hissed. “I just—I don’t remember.” His hands were shaking. “You think maybe that’s where I used to live? Lawrence, Kansas?”  
  
“That’s where I found you the first time,” Sam said. “Maybe we shouldn’t have blown out of town so quickly. Maybe—“  
  
Dean picked up the gun delicately. “You think this works? You really think it’s possible for a gun to kill a demon?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Sam said. “I mean there are a lot of things I didn’t think were possible before a month ago and if this demon’s coming after us, it may be the only defense we’ve got.”  
  
“Sam,” Dean said quietly. “This same demon came after my kid years ago and now it’s all messed up in psychic kids and the end of the world and I mean the ages are right. You don’t think?”  
  
Sam could hear the unspoken question, the tremor in his voice.  _You don’t think Johnny’s one of those kids, do you? You don’t think he’s like Webber and his mind control or like you with your freaky-ass visions._  
  
“Would it really matter if he was?” Sam asked.  
  
Dean was quiet for a long, listening to the rain beat on the roof of the impala. “No,” he said finally. “No, it wouldn’t.” He cracked a smile. “Besides you’re one of those psychic freaks and it seems like you’ve turned out all right.”  
  
“Jerk,” Sam mumbled, swatting at him with an open palm.  
  
“Bitch,” Dean answered, grinning.  
  
“What do we do know then?” Sam asked. “This feels like a lead.”  
  
“Lawrence, Kansas,” Dean said. “sounds like that’s where everything started.”  
  
“Lawrence it is,” Sam said, turning the key in the impala’s ignition.   
  
His phone started ringing. Dean, already on edge nearly jumped out of his seat at the sound, head jerking side to side trying to locate the source of the noise. Sam fought the urge to laugh at him. Cell phones hadn’t been in use in the eighties and Dean still wasn’t used to his ring tone coming out of nowhere. “Relax,” he said, pulling his cell out of his pocket to check the caller. He frowned. “It’s Chris.”  
  
Flipping the phone open, Sam brought it to his ear. “Chris,” he said. “What’s up?”  
  
“There’s a gun pointed at my head right now,” Chris said without preamble.   
  
“What?” Sam asked. Chris had a bizarre sense of humor sometimes, but this was ridiculous.  
  
“There is a gun,” Chris repeated, “pointed at my head. Mason’s flipped a gasket. He’s here demanding that you and Dean get here right now or he’s going to kill me.”  
  
“Wait,” Sam said. “You’re joking, right. Mason’s a crazy son of a bitch but he’s a hunter. He doesn’t hurt people.”  
  
“Tell that to him, Winchester,” Chris growled. “What part of—“  
  
There was abrupt silence from the other end of the line, nothing but the crackling hiss of static and then Mason’s gruff, distinct voice. “Long time no see, Sammy.”  
  
“What the hell are you playing at, Mason!” Sam roared. “Chris has nothing to do with any of this!”  
  
“I don’t want to hurt your friend,” Mason said. “But believe me, if I have to, I won’t even think twice. Dean is dangerous and every second he’s out there, more people will die. I’ve seen what the shadow men will do. So do me a favor, Sammy-boy. Bring me your friend Dean before I do something rash.”  
  
“Mason,” Sam started.  
  
“See you soon, Sam,” Mason said.  
  
The dial tone was impossibly loud to his ears. Sam’s hands were shaking as he brought the phone down. Dean looked at him from the passenger’s seat, still clutching the letter. “What’s wrong Sam?”  
  
“Chris is in trouble,” Sam said. “Mason’s got her. He wants you dead.”  
  
“Well then all the more reason to head in the other direction,” Dean sounded rushed, breathless. “Let’s go to Lawrence, Sam. We’re close. I can feel it.”  
  
Part of Sam wanted to agree with him. Wanted to find answers: what happened to his father, what happened to Jessica, why he was getting visions. But he couldn’t do that for Chris. It was his fault she had been dragged into this mess. “No,” said Sam. “No, I’ve got to get back to Singer’s Salvage.”  
  
“You realize we’re walking straight into a trap, right?”  
  
“I don’t care,” Sam answered.  
  
At this point it wasn’t like he had many friends left.


	11. Chapter 11

It was normally a day’s drive to Uncle Bobby’s house but fueled by panic and caffeine, Sam made it in twelve hours flat. The junkyard looked foreign and strange in the greenish morning light, twisted hunks of scrap metal morphing into the dark abyss of hell. Sam skidded to a stop outside Uncle Bobby’s house and bolted out of the car in a quick smooth motion. “I’m going to check the perimeter,” Dean called to his retreating back. “Don’t do anything stupid.”  
  
Sam barely heard him as he dashed up the porch. The door was ajar, swinging on busted hinges. The place was a wreck. There was a thick layer of dust on the floor that hadn’t been there the last time Sam was. He could see a pair of foot tracks in the dust. Big clunky boots that Sam guessed belonged to Mason and a smaller pair of tennis shoes that had to be Chris’s. He crouched down lowly, moving as softly as his body would permit. The blinds were drawn in the house, making it dark and difficult to navigate. It didn’t matter much to Sam though because he knew this house better then the back of his hand. Uncle Bobby was not a man who liked change and the furniture had been in the same configuration since Sam was a toddler. He crept past an open door, taking the corner quickly, entering gun first. It was his room and it had been ransacked. The drawers were pulled out, clothes strewn around. His mattress had been slashed. Sam thought of the colt packed away in the impala.   
  
Something was wrong. Mason wouldn’t have a reason to be ransacking his room. Mason knew he wasn’t a hunter, knew he didn’t keep a hidden collection of weapons stashed under his bed.  
  
He heard a sound coming from the next room over, a kind of muffled sob and all suspicions flew out of his mind. “Chris,” he muttered moving swiftly into the next room. Uncle Bobby’s room, the back room that housed hundreds of hunters and secrets over these past twenty years. The door was cracked partially open. Sam took a deep breath and threw himself around the corner brandishing the gun in front of him.   
  
The scene wasn’t what he would have expected. There was a body splayed out face down on the wood paneled floor, the back half of his head caved in. Sam recognized the guy’s jacket, his build, his coloring. It was Mason. Mason who was clearly and undeniably dead, blood pooling on the ground around him.   
  
And curled up in the corner, hugging her knees to her chest as the tears streamed down her face was Chris. There was blood coating her arms, red and sticky and still fresh. “Chris?” Sam said cautiously.   
  
“Sam!” Chris said, crying. She leaped to her feet and pulling him into an impossibly tight hug. “Sam, I didn’t mean to do it. I just wanted to get away. I was scared.”  
  
Chris’s trusty baseball bat was lying three feet away, the metal coated in blood. Sam thought about blunt force trauma he’d seen as a side effect in his pre-law classes. The pattern of the wound was the same. “Chris, it’s all right.”  
  
“I didn’t mean too!” Chris cried. “Sam I didn’t want any of this to happen!”  
  
“Outside looks clear,” Dean said. He pushed open the door, stepped inside and froze, taking in the scene quickly. His eyes locked on Chris. His face twisted into a fierce scowl. “It’s you.”  
  
Sam felt Chris’s body stiffen. He let go of her shoulders, backing away.   
  
And Chris stood in the dim light, dark hair falling in clumps around her face as she started at them both through bright yellow eyes. “Dean,” Chris said is a voice lower and deeper then Sam recognized. “Still piercing the veil I see.”  
  
“You son of a bitch,” Dean hissed and raised the gun.  
  
The demon wearing Chris’s face made a clicking sound with her tongue, raised a hand and said, “Not this time, Dean-o.” The gun flew out of Dean’s hands, landing solidly in Chris’s tiny hands. “Thanks though. I’ve been looking for that.”  
  
“What did you do to Chris?” Sam hissed. “I swear to God.”  
  
“Oh, it’s not what I did to Chris,” the Demon said. “It’s what did sweet little Chrissie do to Mason. She made quite a mess, didn’t she? Bludgeoned with a baseball bat. Strong for her size. Not my usual preference in a meat suit, but fully functional.”  
  
“If you hurt her,” Sam growled, lunging for the demon. Chris waved a hand and he rocked backwards, colliding into the wall with a force that shook uncle Bobby’s house to its very core.   
  
“You’ll do what again, Sammy?” the demon sneered. “From where I’m standing it doesn’t look like you can do much of anything. So sit a spell. I’ve got a bone to pick with Dean here.” Chris’s eyes flashed yellow. Dean strained against the invisible force holding him fast. “I’m got to say, Dean, it’s good to see you out.” The demon let out a breath hissing through Chris’s teeth. “Because if I’m not mistaken. That’s a violation of our  _deal_. Your Johnny’s fair game.”  
  
What little color that was in Dean’s cheeks drained leaving a sheet white that looked more like a ghost then a human. “You’re not going to touch him. You said you wouldn’t touch him. A normal life. Away from all this shit.”  
  
“For as long as you were in Hell,” the demon said, putting an arm against the wall and leaning over next to him. “But unless I’m mistaken. You’re out--which means our deal is off. And boy, you’re kid’s a smart one. Developing faster then the speed of light. I hadn’t expected this. Especially not after you were such a dud.”  
  
Dean didn’t know what the demon was talking about. Sam could see the confusion seeping into his face amidst the blind fury. The yellow-eyed demon laughed in Chris’s light airy tone and the sound made Sam almost physically ill.  
  
“Oh, never heard this one, have you, Dean,” the demon said. “It’s a good story. See, forty-six years ago pretty little Mary Winchester burned up over her son, Dean’s crib. His daddy grabbed him and pulled him out of the flames and the two spend almost twenty years criss-crossing the country in that old impala of yours looking for,” he paused. “Well, looking for me and killing whatever else you could along the way. And then,” Chris’s face twisted into a lopsided grin so very unlike her usual sunny smile. “And then there’s the twist. One of the girls Dean had his way with drops by with a little bundle of joy. I’m ecstatic. This generation of kid was so much better then the last anyway. They’re chosen. Special. So I’m a little disappointed when Dean Winchester drops off the hunter’s map. He gets a job, settles down and plays daddy and everything’s apple pie and picket fences until he catches me paying a visit to his son one day.” The demon dragged the barrel of the pistol down Dean’s cheek. “His precious little gun was a day away, backlogged by the post office. So he dis the only thing he could think of. He made a deal and well, you know the rest. And then we have poor Sammy,” the demon continued gleefully turning toward Sam. “Sam who’s father abandoned him when he was just six months old with a complete stranger. Are we seeing the parallels here or do you need the remedial course?”  
  
Realization crossed Dean’s face a split second before it hit Sam. Because it made perfect sense. More sense then having visions of people he’d never met anyway. And then, out of a distant fog, a memory hit him. Only it wasn’t his memory, it was Dean’s:  
  
 _Nineteen eighty three, sitting in the old black impala outside Singer’s Salvage with a baby secured in a car seat while Bobby Singer comes out with a shotgun and a scowl. “Thought I told you, Winchester!” He fired off a warning shot. “I didn’t ever want to see you ‘round these parts again.”  
  
Dean scrambled out of the car, hands raised high. “I’m in trouble, Bobby,” he said. “I’m in trouble and I can’t get a hold of Dad and I didn’t know who else I could turn to.”  
  
“What’s wrong?” Bobby asked, lowering the shotgun.   
  
With infinite care, Dean reached into the impala and undid the fastenings on the car seat, pulling the child out and cradling him in his arms. “Bobby, this is John Samuel Winchester. Johnny. He’s---he’s mine.”  
  
“Congratulations are in order then, boy,” Bobby said. “I don’t suppose you’ve had a chance to sleep since this little one started wailing.”  
  
“He doesn’t cry,” Dean said, shifting his grip so he could support the infant’s head. “Hardly at all. He just—“ He stopped. “Bobby, I’m in trouble. Johnny’s in trouble. And I’ve got to go take care of it before he gets hurt. I just need you to watch him for a few days.” He gestured helplessly to the car. “I’ve got all the things you need in here.”  
  
“That’s a hell of a thing to ask a man,” Bobby said.   
  
“Dad’s coming,” Dean said. “I left him a message and say what you want about my dad but he doesn’t turn his back on family. He’ll be here in a few days. I just need you to watch him until then. Please, Bobby?” His face was pale and sweaty, his hands wet. “Please? I don’t have anyone else I trust.”  
  
Bobby was quiet for a long moment but then put out his hands and very carefully took the baby out of Dean’s arms, cradling him gently. “Hey there, Sam,” he said.  
  
Dean watched sadly as the baby made a grab for Bobby’s scraggly beard. “His name’s Johnny.”  
  
Bobby let out a snort of laughter. “If you think I’m going to deal with two John Winchesters, you’re off your rocker.”  
  
There was a wetness in Dean’s eyes as he nodded and forced a smile. “Thanks, Bobby. Dad should be here before you know it. Could you tell him---“ Dean paused. “Could you tell Dad to make sure he gets a shot at normal?”  
  
“There any reason you can’t tell him yourself?”  
  
Dean didn’t answer. “Just, tell Johnny I love him, alright?”_  
  
The scene twisted back to the house, the light from the green sky outside. Dean was staring at him with an aching on his face. His mouth moved to form the words,  _I’m sorry._  
  
“Touching as this little reunion is,” the demon sneered, “I’ve got something more interesting to do. You see it turns out Hell and Earth, they’re not so far away as they used to be. In fact, you spill some of the right blood in the right places, well all sorts of interesting things start happening. All you really need is some help from one of those special kids. Works well when you’ve got them killing people, like what happened to dear little Jessica. Works better when they’re killing each other. But I guess we’ll have to make do with what we’ve got.”  
  
The demon produced a gleaming sliver knife from Chris’s sleeve. Sam recognized as Mason’s favorite knife. It was pure silver, engraved with an intricate symbol used to amplify the effects of any magic in the air. “This is going to hurt,” the demons said in Chris’s deceptively sweet voice. “It’s all right to scream.”  
  
“I’m going to kill you if you touch him,” Dean howled. “I swear to God, I will end you”  
  
“Quiet now, Daddy dearest,” Chris said, extending a hand in his direction.  
  
Dean screamed, pressed up against the wall by an invisible force. Out of nowhere, blood started to appear, slicing through his chest, seeping through his body. “Dean!” Sam yelled. “Dean!”  
  
“Your turn,” Chris said, plunging the knife into his stomach.  
  
Sam tried to double over in pain but the invisible force held his arms fast against the wall, refused to let him curve his spine. The pain was white hot, starting from the room and screaming up all his synapses, setting every limb on fire. Chris smiled sweetly and twisted the blade before pulling it out saying a few words in a coarse language Sam had never heard before. The drops of his blood hung in the air as they dripped off the, shining in the dim green glow and Chris moved to arrange them precisely, the shimmering drops turning into solid lines and the lines twisting into the solidifying outline of a door. “Time was you needed a Devil’s Gate to do something like this.” The demon dropped the knife in favor of the colt, pressing the barrel into the place that would be the door handle. “Turns out nowadays, you just need a key.”  
  
The demon twisted the gun and the outline shimmered for just a second in the air before exploding into motion. Black smoke and ghosts and dozens of things Sam didn’t even recognize exploding into the world around them. Chris was laughing delightedly. Sam felt the pressure on his body ease and he slammed into the ground. A white flash of pain threatened to envelop him. “Dean!” he choked, trying not to notice the way the word sent a smattering of blood spraying to the floor. “Dean.”  
  
And then under the roar of the demons, he heard Dean’s voice. Quiet at first but getting louder with each syllable. “Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas--”  
  
It was the exorcism tumbling out of Dean’s mouth with a quiet, precise urgency. Chris’s body twitched, dropping the gun.   
  
No one should be able to move through that sort of pain, Sam thought. It shouldn’t be possible, but Dean had spent years in hell accustomed that to level of pain, dealing with that level of pain. Chris closed her eyes tight and squashed her mouth shut as if attempting to keep the demon bottled up inside but as Dean’s voice rose, she tossed her head back and screamed as the smoke shot out of her mouth and joined the swirling mass of demons making their escape from hell. Chris’s body toppled to the ground. Sam turned his head away from he sight, trying to glimpse Dean through the masses.   
  
He was turning back into shadows again, dragged back hellward in the undercurrent of the massive exodus from Hell. “Johnny,” Dean whispered, eyes unfocused, indistinct.  
  
“Dean!” Sam said.  
  
And something woke up inside him. Something that had been threatening to break through since the visions started, since Jessica and Stanford burned. There was a shift in the atmosphere, and suddenly Sam could see, see where Hell ended and the earth began. Could see the real manifestation of the door, the complicated blend of blood magic and spell work just as real as the world around him. So he took a deep breath and reached clumsily into the hidden depths that housed his powers and slammed into the spell work with all his might. It crumpled like a stack of cars, the roar of the exiting demons suddenly starting to diminish as the portal shrank. Wincing in pain, Sam reached into the rest of the world, trying to seperate Hell from the Earth and shoved it back forcefully back into its rightful place. Silence swept over him as his hearing cut out completely. He felt something burst and blood started snaking its way down from his nose as his vision blacked out. Somehow his hand found its way to Dean’s right before he lost all feeling in his body.   
  
He was exhausted. It was worse then the all-nighters at Stanford studying for the LSATs, worse then all those sleepless nights on the hunt with Mason. He felt his body starting to break. Old wounds and scars tore open anew. His stomach was on fire. He felt his arm snap. He tried to scream but no sound came out. And just when he through it might have been too much he felt himself falling away into the shadows that ruled his world.   
  


________________________________________________________________________

  
  
Something beeped in his ear, impossibly loud in the deafening silence. Sam flinched and tried to move his hands and then it beeped again. He couldn’t see.   
  
He fought a surging panic that ended only when he realized he couldn’t see because his eyes were closed. A voice said, “Johnny?” It sounded like it was a million miles away.   
  
“Sam,” he answered, blinking as the world started to come back into focus. “It’s Sam.”  
  
Dean was at his bedside, staring at him under pale skin and thick black smudges under the eyes. “I don’t know what you did, but you’re never allowed to do it again.”  
  
Inches from indignation, Sam opened his mouth and tried to draw himself up to argue, but every muscle in his body protested vehemently. “I don’t think I want to do that again.”  
  
Dean laughed, but the laughter turned into a hacking cough. “It’s really good to have you back, Sam.”  
  
“How long was I out?”  
  
“Two months,” Dean said. He rubbed at his eyes. “Granted I was out of it for about half of that. Doctor’s couldn’t tell what it was. They said it wasn’t just the knife wound. It was like your entire body reset. You were suffering exhaustion, malnutrition, bunches of old scar tissue gave way. What the hell did you do anyway?”  
  
Sam frowned. “I really don’t know. I just—it was like I had this thing inside of me and I just used it. I don’t really know what happened.”  
  
“You closed it, Sammy,” Dean said. There was a light in his eyes that Sam had never seen before, a flush of red crossing previously ashen cheeks. “You slammed the damned door in Hell’s face.”  
  
Sam blinked and took stock of his surroundings for the first time. He was in tiny hospital room on an uncomfortable bed, hooked into three different machines and an IV. But from out the window, he could see bright, unpolluted sunlight streaming in from a clear blue sky.   
  
“This thing inside you,” Dean said. “What the demon was talking about. Is it still there?”  
  
Uncertainty colored his features. Dean didn’t like things he couldn’t understand, but for Sam’s sake he was willing to try. Sam closed his eyes and tried to find the small locked room that housed his talents, but the door didn’t seem to be there anymore.  
  
“I think I used it all up,” Sam said. “It’s gone.” He stared out the open window at the clear blue sky. “Almost like it never happened.”  
  
“It happened,” Dean countered quickly. “The world’s starting to forget but that doesn’t change it at all. But you don’t need to worry about that. You can go back to school, get back to your normal life.”  
  
Sam pushed himself slowly to a sitting position, wincing as the IV pulled at the skin on his arm. “What about you?”  
  
“Same old life I guess. Saving people, hunting things. I’m betting that demon’s still out there somewhere. Your friend, Chris, dropped off the colt before she skipped out of town. Not to mention all those other things that made a break for it while the door was open. There’s plenty of work to be done.” Dean shrugged. “Sure beats an eternity in Hell.”  
  
There was something forming in the pit of Sam’s stomach. A sensation he’d never really felt before. “Dean,” he said cautiously. “You don’t think I could maybe—“  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“I could come with you,” Sam stammered. “I mean, it sounds like it is sort of the family business.”  
  
“Really?” Dean asked. He looked impossibly young in the afternoon sun and Sam had to remind himself that Dean had spent twenty years in hell. That he’d spent a lifetime before that hunting, that he’d lost everything and everyone only to finally get a piece of it back.   
  
They were missing time sure, missing twenty years of his youth that should have been spent in this man’s company, but that was over and past and it was never coming back. This was a new start. “There are still demons out there,” Sam said slowly. “Not to mention ghosts and poltergeists and god knows what else. If we aren’t hunting them, who else is going to do it?”   
  
A smile spread slowly across Dean’s face. “Sounds like we’ve got work to do.”


End file.
